She vanished, and Mrs. McNally also went away.
Some time later Pat Rooney entered the shop, bearing a large tray of newly-baked loaves. His face wore a solemn, not to say sulky, expression, and he looked neither to right nor to left. Before he had finished piling up the loaves in their allotted corner, however, a suspicious sound attracted his attention, and he turned reluctantly round. A small figure was crouching in the darkest angle of the "dress department," with its apron over its head.
"Is it cryin' ye are?" said Pat sternly.
For all answer Elleney sobbed afresh.
The young man drew nearer, and Elleney tilted up one elbow as a hint to him to keep his distance.
"Bedad, ye have no right to be cryin'," remarked Pat in a withering tone. "It was the other way wid ye altogether when I looked in through the door a while ago, on my way back from me dinner. If I hadn't seen it wid me own two eyes," he added with scornful severity, "I wouldn't have believed it was you that was in it at all."
Elleney jerked down her apron, and looked up with eyes that blazed beneath their swollen lids.
"How dar' ye speak to me that way?" she cried.
Pat snorted: "To be sure I've no right to say a word at all," he returned, with wrathful irony. "A poor fellow like meself has no call to have any feelin's—but ye might have knocked me down with a feather when I seen that strange chap with his arm about your waist."
"Oh Pat!" gasped Elleney, and overcome with shame and woe, she burst into fresh tears, and buried her face in the unresponsive folds of a linsey-woolsey petticoat which dangled from a peg beside her.