TOWARDS the end of the following year a great event took place in Frosses. It was reported that a registered letter addressed to “James Ryan, Esquire, Meenalicknalore” was lying in Frosses post-office. Norah heard the news and spoke of it to her father.
“No one but your own self can get the letter,” she said. “That is what the people at the post-office say. You have to write your name down on white paper too, before the letter crosses the counter.”
“And is it me, a man who was never at school, that has to put down my name?” asked James Ryan in a puzzled voice.
“It will be a letter from the boy himself,” said the old woman, who was sitting up in bed and knitting. Now and again she placed her bright irons down and coughed with such violence as to shake her whole body. “And maybe there is money in the same letter. It is not often that we have a letter coming to us.”
“We had none since the last process for the rent and that was two years aback,” said the husband. “Maybe I will be going into Frosses and getting that letter myself now.”
“Maybe you would,” stammered his wife, still battling with her cough.
James Ryan put on his mairteens and left the house. Norah watched him depart, and her eyes followed him until he turned the corner of the road; then she went to the bedside and sitting on a low stool commenced to turn the heel of a long stocking.
“How many days to a day now is it since Fergus took the road to Derry?” asked the old woman. “I am sure it is near come nine months this very minute.”
“It is ten months all but sixteen days.”
“Under God the day and the night, and is it that?”