“The tide is long on the turn, so you’d better be off, Norah.”
“I’m off and away, mother.”
Two voices were speaking inside a cabin on the coast of Donegal. The season was mid-winter; the time an hour before the dawn of a cheerless morning. Within the hovel there was neither light nor warmth; the rushlight had gone out and the turf piled on the hearth refused to burn. Outside a gale was blowing, the door, flimsy and fractured, creaked complainingly on its leathern hinges, the panes of the foot-square and only window were broken, the rags that had taken their places had been blown in during the night, and the sleet carried by the north-west wind struck heavily on the earthen floor. In the corner of the hut a woman coughed violently, expending all the breath in her body, then followed a struggle for air, for renewed life, and a battle against sickness or death went on in the darkness. There was silence for a moment, then a voice, speaking in Gaelic, could be heard again.
“Are you away, Norah?”
“I am just going, mother. I am stopping the window to keep the cold away from you.”
“God bless you, child,” came the answer. “The men are not coming in yet, are they?”
“I don’t hear their step. Now the window is all right. Are you warm?”
“Middling, Alannah. Did you take the milk for your breakfast?”
“I left some for you in the jug,” came the reply. “Will you take it now?”
“That is always the way with you, Norah,” said the woman in a querulous voice. “You never take your meals, but always leave them for somebody else. And you are getting thinner on it every day. I don’t want anything, for I am not hungry these days; and maybe it is God Himself that put the sickness on me so that I would not take away the food of them that needs it more than I do. Drink the milk, Norah, it will do you good.”