I
NORAH travelled through the streets all day, looking for her friend and fearing that every eye was fixed on her, that everybody knew the secret which she tried to conceal. Her feet were sore, her breath came in short, sudden gasps as she took her way into dark closes and climbed creaking stairs; and never were her efforts rewarded by success. Here in the poorer parts of the city, in the crooked lanes and straggling alleys, were dirt, darkness, and drunkenness. A thousand smells greeted the nostrils, a thousand noises grated on the ears; lights flared brightly in the beershops; fights started at the corners; ballad singers croaked out their songs; intoxicated men fell in the gutters; policemen stood at every turning, their helmets glistening, their faces calm, their eyes watchful. The evening had come and all was noise, hurry, and excitement.
“Isaac Levison, Pawnbroker; 2 Up,” Norah read on a plate outside the entrance of a close and went in.
“I wonder if Sheila will be here?” she asked herself, and smiled sadly as she called to mind the number of closes she had crawled into during the whole long trying day.
Dragging her feet after her, she made her way up the crooked stairs and rapped with her knuckles at a door on which the words “Caretaker’s office” were painted in black letters. A woman, with a string for a neck and wisps of red hair hanging over her face, poked out her head.
“Up yet,” was the answer when Norah asked if anybody named Sheila Carrol dwelt on the stairs.
“After all my searchin’ she’s here at last,” said the young woman. “It’s Sheila Carrol herself that’s in the place.”
The beansho opened the door when she heard a rapping outside. She knew her visitor at once.
“Come in, Norah Ryan,” she said, catching the girl’s hands and squeezing them tightly. “It’s good of ye to come. No one from Frosses, only Oiney Dinchy’s gasair, have I seen here for a long while. But ye’ll be tired, child?”
“It’s in an ill way that I come to see ye, Sheila Carrol,” said Norah. “It’s an ill way, indeed it is,” and then, sitting down, she told her story quietly as if that which she spoke of did not interest her in any way.