III
“WHAT have I done, what’s Alec Morrison to me?”
Norah asked herself as she looked in her little cracked hand mirror ten minutes later. “He’s nothin’ to me, nothin’, nothin’; no more than Dermod Flynn is. The two of them might so well be strangers to me. Now why did he kiss me? Dermod never kissed me. I’m glad of that.”
Norah looked round the byre, at the bunks in the stalls, the cattle troughs and the candle burning on the iron stanchion. She was alone, the other women were still out with the card-players in the shed.
“I must be very good-lookin’,” she whispered to herself as her eyes sought their reflection in the cracked mirror; then she blushed at her girlish vanity and innocent pride. “And him so grand, too, a gentleman!” But in some indistinct and indefinite way she felt that she would be raised to his level. “And he kissed me—here.” She put her fingers over her red lips. “But he’s nothin’ to me, nothin’. Dermod Flynn is nothin’ either.” She knew that the first assertion was not true; the repetition of the second gave her a certain pleasure.
“Do I love two of them? Can one love two people?” she asked herself. “But I’m not in love and never was. I like Dermod, but all the girls in the squad like him.... Why did Alec Morrison kiss me, and him a gentleman? It wasn’t my fault, was it?” She looked round and addressed an imaginary person, a look of bewilderment settling on her face.
“Did I go out to meet him this evenin’? Did I like his kisses? Is Dermod Flynn angry? I couldn’t help liking Dermod; he is so good, so kindly. But I’m a bad girl, very bad; all my life was full of sin. Pride and vanity, what the Catechism condemned, are my two sins. I used to be vain at school. I had two shoes and I was proud, because other people wore only mairteens. I used to dress my hair and try and look nicer than any other girsha; because I was vain. And now I’m vain because a well-dressed gentleman talks kindly to me. God forgive me! Ah, this looking-glass, I hate it! I’ll just have one look at myself and then never get hold of a glass again.”
She sat down on the bed and her fingers toyed with the potato sacks that served as quilt.
“Yes, he’s very nice and talks to us so kindly,” she whispered, and again her eyes sought the mirror. “Oh, it was a fine evening, one of the nicest ever I had.... They’re not too red, just pale, and when the blush is in them I’m better lookin’ than at any time. Has any one in the squad cheeks like mine?... Why did he want to kiss me? And my boots to one side at the heels and the toe-cap risin’ off one of them. I wish I had money, lots of it, gold, a crock of gold like the fairies leave under the holly bush.... I could buy new dresses and maybe rings. Norah, don’t let your hair hang down so far over your forehead, it doesn’t become ye. A wee bit back there, no, here; that’s it. Now ye’re very good lookin’.” “And to think of it as the first time and he has won fifteen shillin’s!” said Maire a Glan, who had just entered the byre. “Fifteen shillin’s, Norah!”
“What?”