The apartment was a very small one, with one four-paned window and two doors, one of which led, as Norah knew, out to the landing, and one, as she guessed, into the room belonging to old Meg, the woman whom Sheila had spoken of the night before. The window was cracked and crooked, the floor and doors creaked at every move, a musty odour of decay and death filled the whole place. A heap of white shirts was piled on the orange box that stood in the middle of the floor, one shirt, the “finishing” of which had not been completed, lay on an old newspaper beside the fireplace. It looked as if Sheila had become suddenly tired in the midst of her feather-stitching and had slipped into bed. She was now awake and almost as soon as she had opened her eyes was out of the blankets, had wrapped a few rags round her bony frame and was busy at work with her needle. Sleep for the woman was only a slight interruption of her eternal routine.
“Have a wee wink more,” she cried to Norah, “and I’ll just make a good warm cup of tay for ye when I get this row finished. Little rogue of all the world! ye’re tired out and worn!”
Norah smiled sadly, got up, dressed herself, and going down on her knees by the bedside, said her prayers.
“It’s like Frosses again,” said Sheila, when the girl’s prayers came to an end. “Even seein’ ye there on yer knees takes back old times. But often I do be thinkin’ that prayin’ isn’t much good. There was old Doalty Farrel; ye mind him talkin’ about politics the night yer father, God rest him! was underboard. Well, Doalty was a very holy man, as ye know yerself, and he used to go down on his knees when out in the very fields and pray and pray. Well and good; he went down one day on his knees in the snow and when he got home he had a pain in one of his legs. That night it was in his side, in the mornin’ Doalty was dead. Gasair Oiney Dinchy was tellin’ me all about it.”
“But they say in Frosses that God was so pleased with Doalty that He took him up to heaven before his time,” said Norah.
“But it’s not many that like to go to heaven before their time,” Sheila remarked as she rose from her seat and set about to kindle the fire. At the same moment the door leading in from the compartment opened, and an old woman, very ugly, her teeth worn to the gums, the stumps unhealthily yellow, her eyes squinting and a hairy wart growing on her right cheek, entered the room.
“Good morra, Meg,” said Sheila, who was fanning the fire into flame with her apron. “Are ye goin’ to yer work?”
“Goin’ to my work,” replied Meg and turned her eyes to Norah. “A friend, I see,” she remarked.
“A countrywoman of my own,” said Sheila.
“Are ye new to Glesga?” Meg asked Norah, who was gazing absently out of the window.