"Come in and get some petaties ready for her, Norah. I don't want to stop again in my work." (Mrs. O'Neil pronounced it "wurruk.")
Mrs. Maloney lived in a lonely cabin about two miles away. You would hardly believe it, but Norah's home was almost a palace beside Mrs. Maloney's.
There was one little window, as she would have called it. It was really only a hole in the wall. When heavy rains fell, the old woman stuffed it with marsh-grass. The thatched roof had fallen in at one end of the cabin. The furniture was a chair and a rough bedstead.
Poor old Mrs. Maloney! Once she had a strong husband and eight happy children, but, one by one, they had died, and now she was old and feeble, and had no one in the world to look after her.
Is it any wonder that the generous people whom she visited always had something to give and a kind word to speak to her?
Every few days, she went from house to house, holding out her apron as she stood in the doorway. She did not need to say a word. One kind woman would give her a bit of tea, another a loaf of bread, a third a cabbage, and a fourth a little butter.
In this way she was kept from starving, or from going to the workhouse, which she dreaded nearly as much.
As Norah dropped the potatoes into her apron, the old woman blessed her heartily. As she turned to leave, Mrs. O'Neil called after her to ask how she got along in yesterday's bad storm.
"Sure and I was that feared I dared not stay in the cabin. It was so bad I thought it would fall down on me shoulders. So I wint out and sat on the turf behind it. I was wet indade when the storm was over."
"Too bad, too bad," said Mrs. O'Neil, in a voice of pity. "We must see what can be done for you."