“I’m all right. How is she, Con?”
Con had swung himself out before the car finally stopped, and was examining the battered bonnet dismally, finally appealing for help to push her away from the wall.
“In a minute,” O’Neill said.
He walked over to the old woman, who still sat motionless on the floor of the ass-cart, her withered face pitifully afraid.
“Did you not hear the horn?” O’Neill asked.
“I did, sir—but I didn’t rightly know what it was, an’ I half asleep.” She rocked herself to and fro, wretchedly. “Oh, wirra, the great mothor! Is it desthroyed entirely, sir?”
“It is not—but it’s the mercy of Heaven we’re not all killed, and you and the little ass, too. When you hear that horn, mother, get to one side of a road quickly: and don’t be afraid to call out, if it happens to be a narrow road.”
“I . . . I . . .” She looked at him helplessly, her voice breaking.
“Don’t worry—you’re all right,” he said gently. “Is it tired you are?”
“I been sittin’ up with my son these two nights,” she said, finding words. “Mortal ill he was, an’ the woman he married no more use than a yalla-haired doll. An’ when they’re sick they do be wantin’ their mothers again, like as if they’d gone back to be little boys.” Just for a moment he caught a gleam of triumph in her dulled eyes.