“By God! that was a great dunt that O’Donnel gave ye,” said Jim. “They’re great women, them, without a doubt,” he added. “It’s a long while since Gourock Ellen broke her pitcher.”
“How? What do you mean?”
“Ye’re green, Dermod, green as a cabbage,” said Jim, chuckling. “Them women—but I’ll tell ye all about it some other time. Willie the Duck is a great friend of them same women. He knows what they are, as well as anyone, don’t ye, Willie?”
“Aye, sure,” said Willie, who did not know what Jim was speaking about, but wished to be agreeable to everybody.
II
A short run on a fast train from Upper Greenock to Wemyss Bay was followed by an hour’s journey on a boat crowded with passengers bound for Rothesay. It was now the last day of June, and those who had rented coast houses for the following month were flocking down from Glasgow and other Clydeside industrial centres. In the midst of the crowd of gaily dressed trippers all the members of the squad felt sensitive and shy and stood huddled awkwardly together on deck; all but Micky’s Jim and the strange men and women, who paraded up and down the deck, careless of the eyes that were fixed upon them. Old Maire a Glan was praying, her rosary hidden under her shawl; Dermod Flynn was looking over the rail into the water, his main interest in turning away being to keep the naked knee that peeped through his torn trousers hidden from the sight of the elegantly dressed trippers. Norah envied the young girls who chattered noisily to and fro, envied them their fine hats and brave dresses, their elegant shoes and the wonderful sparkling things that decorated their necks and wrists. What a splendid vision for the girl’s eyes! the hot sun overhead in a sky of blue, the water glancing brightly as the boat cut through it; the fair women, the well-dressed men, the band playing on deck, the glitter, the charm and the happiness! The girl could hardly realise that such beauty existed, though once she had seen a picture of a scene something like this in one of the books which Fergus used to read at home. Poor girl! the water was still running down her stockings, her clothes were ragged and dirty, and the boy, her youthful lover, was hiding his naked knee by turning to the rail!
Opposite the crowd in which Norah stood, a group of five persons—father, mother and their children, a son and two daughters—were sitting on camp-stools. The man, bubble-bellied and short, had taken off his hat, and in the sunlight beads of sweat glittered on his bald head like crystals in a white limestone facing. His wife, a plump, good-looking woman, who seemed full of a haughty self-esteem, gazed critically through a lorgnette on the unkempt workers and sniffed contemptuously as if something had displeased her when her examinations came to an end. The three little things regarded them wonderingly for a moment and afterwards began to ply first the father and then the mother with questions about the strange folk who were aboard the boat. But the parents, finding that the children were speaking too loudly, bade them be silent, and the little ones, getting no answer to their questions, began to puzzle over this and wonder who and what were the queer, ragged people sitting opposite.
The girls, taking into account the contemptuous stare which their mother fixed on the members of the squad, came to the conclusion that the beings who were dressed so differently from themselves were really other species of men and women altogether and were far inferior to those who wore starched collars and gold ornaments.
The boy, an undersized little fellow with sharp, twinkling eyes, looked at his father when putting his questions, but the old man pulled a paper—The Christian Guide—from his pocket and, burying himself in it, took no notice of the youngster’s queries.
The boy solved the question for himself in the curious incomplete way which is peculiar to a child.