“Just for the little thing to play wi’,” she would explain in an apologetic voice, as if ashamed of being found guilty of a good action. Afterwards she would add: “Ye should have taken the twa extra shillin’s a week when they were offered ye.”
One evening towards Christmas when the old woman was speaking thus, Norah asked:
“If I went back now, would I get a job?”
“The man has got marrit and the place, as ye know yerself, has been filled up ages and ages ago.”
A strange expression, perhaps one of regret, showed for a moment on the face of Norah Ryan.
CHAPTER XXIX
DERMOD FLYNN
I
WHEN the old woman left her, Norah sat for a while buried in thought, her scissors lying on one knee, one hand hanging idly by her side. The boy was very ill, the cough hardly left him for a moment and his eyes were bright and feverish.
“If he dies what am I to do?” Norah asked herself several times. “Then it would be that I’d have nothing to live for.”
She rose and followed Meg into the room. The woman sat beside the fire, humming an old song. A candle, stuck in the neck of a beer-bottle, was alight, and a cricket chirped behind the fireless grate. “I’m goin’ out for a while,” said Norah in a low, strained voice. “Will ye look after the boy until I come back? I’ll take him in here.”