She looked up and saw the glint of the fire on the ring which the visitor wore, and noticed that he was looking at her. She had not noticed the man before. Never had such a well-dressed person visited the squad.
“It’s Alec Morrison, the farmer’s son,” old Maire a Glan, who was sitting beside the girl, whispered. “He just comes in here like one of ourselves, as the man said. Just think of that and him a gentleman!”
Norah bowed her head, for Morrison’s eyes were fixed on her still. Why did he keep staring at her? she asked herself and felt very uncomfortable, but not displeased. And how that ring sparkled, too! It must have cost a great amount of money.
A wave of tenderness swept across Morrison as he looked at Norah. “She’s too good for this sort of life,” he said inwardly as he noticed her white brow, and the small delicate fingers in which she held the needle. “It’s criminal to condemn a girl like her to such a life. The sanitary authorities will not give my father permission to house his cattle in the stall where that girl has now to sleep. That maiden to sleep there! I, a man, who should be able to bear suffering and privation, sleep in soft clothes that are clean and comfortable, and she has to lie in rags, in straw, in a place that is not good enough for cattle. And all these people are like myself, people with souls, feelings and passions....”
“Have you just come to this country for the first time?” he asked Norah, and when he put the question a sense of shame surged through him.
“The first time,” answered the girl.
“And you’ll not think much of Scotland?” he said.
“People like yerself may like it,” said Maire a Glan; “but as for us, it’s beyont talkin’ about.... In the last farm we had to sleep in a shed that was full of rats. They ate our bits of food, aye, and our very clothes. The floor was alive with wood-lice and worms.... The night before we left the shed was flooded, and there was eighteen inches of water on the floor. We had to rise from our beds in the bare pelt and stand all night up to our knees in the cold water.... There’s Norah Ryan getting red in the face as if it was her very own fault.”
“Norah! What a pretty name,” said the young man. “And did she sleep in that shed?”
“The farmers think that we’re pigs,” said Maire a Glan harshly. “That’s why they treat us like pigs.”