The child paid no heed. With her clothes trailing in the stream she walked across breast deep to the other side. Her garments were soaked when she landed. The old woman, placid fatalist, was pulling on her mairteens with skinny, warty hands; another was lacing her brogues; a third tied a rag round her foot, which had been cut by a shell at the bottom of the channel.
“Why did ye let yer clothes drop into the dhan?” croaked the old woman. She asked out of mere curiosity; much suffering had driven all feeling from her soul.
“Why d’ye ask that, Maire a Crick (Mary of the Hill)?” enquired the beansho. “It’s the modest girl that she is, and that’s why she let her clothes down. Poor child! she’ll be wet all day now!”
“Her petticoat is full of water,” said Maire a Crick, tying the second mairteen. “If many’s a one would be always as modest as Norah Ryan they’d have no burden in their shawls this day.”
“Ye’re a barefaced old heifer, Maire a Crick,” said the beansho angrily. “Can ye never hold yer cuttin’ tongue quiet? It’s good that ye have me to be saying the evil word against. If I wasn’t here ye’d be on to some other body.”
“I’m hearin’ that Norah Ryan is a fine knitter entirely,” someone interrupted. “She can make a great penny with her needles. Farley McKeown says that he never gave yarn to a soncier girl.”
“True for ye, Biddy Wor,” said Maire a Crick grudgingly. “It’s funny that a slip of a girsha like her can do so much. I work meself from dawn to dusk, and long before and after, and I cannot make near as much as Norah Ryan.”
“Neither can any of us,” said several women in one breath.
“She only works about fourteen hours every day, too,” said Biddy Wor.
“How much can ye make a day, Norah Ryan?” asked the beansho.