She put on her grey dress, tied a glossy leather belt around her waist, laced her shoes, and when she had finished left the byre, which was lit up by a long white candle stuck in the neck of a whisky-bottle, and went out to the cart-shed where the squad assembled.
Morrison was there before her, sitting beside Micky’s Jim on the end of an upturned cart, and speaking to Maire a Glan about the hardships of the field. Willie the Duck played his fiddle, now sadly out of tune; a game of cards was in progress, and Dermod Flynn, who held the bank, was losing rapidly. It was said that he had no money in hand except the wages which he had lifted that day, and now it was nearly gone. What would he do when all was spent? Nobody enquired, but it was evident that he would not return to Ireland that winter.
Norah entered, her head bent down a little, her hands clasped together and a look of hesitation on her face.
“Ha! there’s another one that’s for Ireland in the morning,” said Micky’s Jim, taking the pipe from his mouth and spitting down between his legs to the floor. It was to Norah that he spoke, and Dermod Flynn ceased playing for a moment to glance over the rim of his cards at the girl. But his mind was busy with something else and his eyes turned back almost instantly to the gaming-table. He cared nothing for her, Norah thought, and the idea gave her a strange comfort.
“You’re going to-morrow as well as the rest?” said Morrison when the girl drew up to the fire. He knew that she was going and felt that he should have said something else. Presently, however, he asked: “Are you glad?”
“Yes,” she answered, but the look in her eyes might have meant “No.” Morrison understood it thus, and the sensation which surged through him on Sunday evening surged through him again.
“Not goin’ to play any more; skinned out,” someone said at the table. Norah glanced at the players and saw that Dermod Flynn had risen. He approached the fire, one hand deep in his pocket, the other holding a splinter of wood which he threw into the flames. He had lost all his money; he hadn’t a penny in the world now. Gourock Ellen offered him a piece of silver to retrieve his fallen fortunes.
“If I don’t win I cannot pay you back,” he said, and sat down beside Morrison and facing Norah. Fixing his eyes on the fire he was presently buried in a reverie and the dreamy look of the schoolboy was again on his face. One of his hands was bleeding; it had been torn on a jagged stave which got loose on the rim of Norah’s basket earlier in the day; his knees peeped out through his trousers and the uppers of both his boots had risen from the soles.
Norah gazed at him covertly, saw the wound on his hand, the bare knees showing through the trousers, and the toes peeping through the torn uppers. Then something glistened brightly and caught her eyes. It was the ring on Morrison’s finger. The young man was speaking.
“ ...and it will be ten months before you are back in the squad again. Such a long time!”