“She’s as stuck-up as Dooey Head,” piped Judy Farrel in a weak, thin voice.
“Micky’s Jim has a notion of her, I hear,” remarked Willie the Duck. “But what girl hasn’t Jim a notion of?”
Jim cleaned out the bowl of his pipe with a rusty nail and fell asleep while engaged on the task. The conversation went on.
“Old Farley McKeown is goin’ to get married to an English lady.”
“A young soncy wench she is, they say!”
“Think of that, for old Farley! A wrinkled old stick of seventy! Ah! the shameless old thing!”
“It’ll be a cold bed for the girl that is alongside of him. She’ll need a lot of blankets, as the man said.”
“Aye, sure, and she will that.”
“But he’s the man that has the money to pay for them.”
Norah, deep in a dreamy mood, listened idly to snatches of song, the laughter, and the voices that seemed to be speaking at a very remote distance; but after a while, sinking into the quiet isolation of her own thoughts, the outside world became non-existent to the young girl. She was thinking of Dermod; why he persisted in coming up before her mind’s eye she could not explain, but the dream of meeting with him on the streets of Derry exerted a restful influence over her and she fell into a light slumber.