“Warm here, isn’t it?” he exclaimed. “Yes, it’s warm, very warm; very comfortable indeed, isn’t it? It’s nice to have a fire on a cold morning, very nice indeed. If you were working in your fathers’ fields you’d have a fire out by your sides, you’d carry a fire about in your pockets all day, you would indeed. Is it not enough for you to have a roof over you?” he cried in an angry tone, his voice rising shrilly; “a roof over your head and four good walls to keep the winds of heaven away from your bodies? No, it isn’t, it isn’t, it isn’t atall, atall! I gave you orders not to put a fire on till I came into the office myself, and what do I see here now? One would think that it’s not me that owns this business. Who does own it, I’d like to know! Is it me or is it you?”
Gasping for breath, he flopped down suddenly into a chair, and drawing off his gloves he stuffed them into the pocket of his coat. Then taking an account book he stroked out several figures with his pen, while between every pen stroke he turned round and shouted: “Is it me that owns this business or is it you? Eh?”
After a while he ceased to speak, probably forgetting his rage in the midst of the work, and for two hours there was almost total silence save for the low scratchings of pen on paper and the occasional grunt which emanated from the throat of Farley McKeown. Suddenly, however, he stopped in the middle of his work and looked at the skylight above, through which snow was falling, and some of it skiting off the window-ledge dropped on the top of his head, which being bald was extremely sensitive to climatic changes. Then he gave an order slowly and emphatically:
“Dony McNelis, close the window.”
One of the clerks, a tall lank youth, rose like a rubber ball, bounded on top of his seat and closed the window with a bang. On stepping down to resume his work, he noticed the crowd of women, now greatly increased by the party which had crossed the bay in the morning, standing huddled together in the street. The sleet was falling thickly—it was now more snow than sleet—and the clothes of the women were covered with a fleecy whiteness. The clerk paused in his descent and looked at the women, then he spoke to the yarn-seller.
“Would it not be better to attend to these women now?” he asked. “Some of them have been out on the cold street since the dawn.”
Farley McKeown turned round sharply. “Is this my business or is it yours?” he cried, rising from the chair and stamping his feet on the floor. “Mine or yours, eh? Have I to run like a dog and attend to these people, have I? I’ve kept them from death and the workhouse for the last forty years, have I not? And now you want me to run out and attend on them, do you? I’ve taken you, Dony McNelis, into my office out of pure charity, and how much money is it that your mother owes me? Couldn’t I turn her out of house and home at a moment’s notice? And in face of that you come here and tell me how to run my own business. Isn’t that what you’re trying to do? Eh?”
The boy sat down without a word, and catching a piece of waste paper off the table, he crumpled it angrily in his hand; then rising again he confronted his master.
“There are women out there from Tweedore and Frosses,” he said. “They have travelled upwards of thirty miles, hungry, all of them, I’ll go bail, and maybe not a penny in their pockets. If they don’t catch the tide when it’s out they’ll have to sleep on the rocks of Dooey all night, and if they do there’ll be more curses on your head in the morning than all the masses ever said and all the prayers ever prayed will be fit to wash away. It’s nearly one of the clock now, and they’ll have to race and catch the tide afore it’s on the turn, so it would be the best thing to do to attend to them this minute.”
The youth stood for a moment after he had delivered this speech, the longest ever made by him in his life, and seemed on the point of saying something more vehement. All at once, however, he sat down again and went on with his work as if nothing unusual had happened.