“Poor child!” said Sheila, when the pitiful tale came to an end. “Why has God put that burden on yer little shoulders? But there’s no use in pining, Norah. Mind that, child!”
“I would like to die, Sheila Carrol,” said Norah, looking round the bare room, but not feeling in the least interested in what she saw. One chair, a bed, a holy water stoup, a little black crucifix from which the arms of the Christ had fallen away, an orange box on which lay a pair of scissors and a pile of cloth: that was all the room contained. A feeble fire burned in the grate and a battered oil-lamp threw a dim light over the compartment.
“I once had thoughts that were like that, meself,” said Sheila. She placed a little tin pannikin on the fire and fanned the flame with her apron. “People face a terrible lot in body and in soul before they face death. That’s the way God made us, child. We do be like grains of corn under a mill-stone, and everything but the breath of our bodies squeezed out of us. Sometimes I do be thinkin’ that the word ‘hope’ is blotted from me soul; but then after a wee while I do be happy in my own way again.”
“But did ye not find yer own burden hard to bear, Sheila?”
“Hard indeed, child, but it’s trouble that makes us wise,” said the beansho, pouring tea into the pannikin that was now bubbling merrily. “The father of me boy died on the sea and me goin’ to be married to him when the season of Lent was by. The cold grey morning when the boat came in keel up on Dooey Strand was a hard and black one for me. Ah! the cold break of day; sorrow take it! The child came and I was not sorry at all, as the people thought I should be. He was like the man I loved, and if the bitin’ tongues of the Frosses people was quiet I would be very happy, I would indeed, Norah! But over here in this country it was sore and bitter to me. I mind the first night that I stopped in Glasgow with the little boy. He was between my arms and I was lookin’ out through the window of 47 at the big clock with the light inside of it. It was a lazy clock that night and I thought that the light of day would never put a colour on the sky. But the mornin’ did come and many mornin’s since then, and stone-cold they were too!”
Then Sheila told the story of her life in Scotland, and Norah, hardly realising what was spoken, listened almost dumbly, feeling at intervals the child within her moving restlessly, stretching out as if with a hand and pressing against her side, causing a quivering motion to run through her body.
Sheila’s story was a pitiful one. When first she came to Glasgow she took an attic room at the top of a four-storeyed building and for this she paid a weekly rent of three shillings and sixpence.
“ ‘Twas the dirty place to live in, Norah, for all the smells and stinks of the houses down under came up to me,” said the woman. “And three white shillin’s and sixpence a week for that place that one wouldn’t put pigs into! The houses away at home may be bad, but there’s always the fresh air and no drunk men or bad women lyin’ across yer door every time ye go outside. 47 was a rotten place; worse even than this, and this is bad. Look at the sheets and blankets on the bed behind ye, Norah, look at the colour of them and the writin’ on them.”
Norah gazed at the bed and saw on every article of clothing, stamped in large blue letters, the words: “STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT.”
“That’s because someone may steal the rags,” said Sheila. “This room is furnished by the landlord, God forgive him for the furnishin’ of it! And he’s afraid that his tenants will run away and try to pawn the bedclothes. Lyin’ under the blankets all night with STOLEN FROM JAMES MOFFAT writ on them is a quare way of sleepin’. But what can a woman like me do? And 47 was worse nor this; and the work! ’Twas beyond speakin’ about!