A difficulty arose about the child’s name: that of the father was out of the question.
“One of the Frosses names for me,” said Sheila. “Doalty, Dony, or Dermod, Murtagh, Shan, or Fergus; Oiney, Eamon, or Hudy; ah! shure, there’s hundreds of them! All good names they are and all belonging to our own arm of the glen. The trouble is that there’s too many to pick from. We’ll be like the boy with the apples; they were all so good that he didn’t know what one to take and he died of fargortha while lookin’ at them. Dermod or Fergus, which will it be?” asked the beansho.
“Dermod,” said Norah simply.
“I thought so,” said the woman. “And I hope another Dermod will come one of these days to see us. Then maybe ... Dermod Flynn was a nice kindly lad, comely and civil.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE RAG-STORE
I
ONCE a week, on Friday, Sheila took a bundle of finished shirts to the clothes-merchant’s office. Seven months after Norah’s arrival Sheila went out one day with her bundle and in the evening the woman did not return. Midnight came and went. From the window Norah watched the lazy hands of the clock crawl out the seconds of existence. Steps could be heard coming up and going down the stairs; then these suddenly ceased. Far away the flames flaring from the top of a chimney-stack glowed fiercely red against the dark sky. A policeman came along the dimly lighted street, walking with tired tread and examining the numbers on the closed entrances. He suddenly disappeared below; afterwards a knock came to the door.
“A woman was run down by a tram-car,” said the policeman, speaking through his heavy moustache, when Norah gave him admittance; “she was killed instantly.... She had a slip of paper ... this address ... maybe you can identify.”
Norah lifted the sleeping babe, wrapped it in her shawl and followed the man. At the police mortuary she recognised Sheila Carrol. The dead woman was in no way disfigured; she lay on a wooden slab, face upwards, and still, so very still!
“Sheila Carrol!... she’s only sleepin’!” said Norah.