As she finished the song, Ellen winked at Micky’s Jim and Jim winked back. Then she hit her thigh with her hand and shouted: “Not a bad leg that for an old one, is it?”
The potatoes were now emptied into a wicker basket, the water running through the bottom into the midden. The men and women sat round the basket, their little tins of milk in their hands, and proceeded to eat their supper. The potato was held in the left hand, and stripped of its jacket with the nail of the right thumb. Gourock Ellen used a knife when peeling, Willie the Duck ate potato, pelt and all.
While they were sitting an old, wrinkled, and crooked man came across the top of the dung-hill, sinking into it almost up to his knees and approached the fire. His clothes were held on by strings, he wore a pair of boots differing one from the other in size, shape, and colour. Indeed they were almost without shape, and the old man’s toes, pink, with black nails, showed through the uppers.
Gourock Ellen handed him three large potatoes from the basket.
“God bless ye, for it’s yerself that has the kindly heart, decent woman,” said the old fellow in a feeble voice, and he began to eat his potatoes hurriedly like a dog. Dermod handed him part of a tin of milk and blushed at the profuse thanks of the stranger.
“It’s a fine warm place that ye are inside of this night,” said the old fellow when he had finished his meal.
“It’s a rotten place,” said Dermod Flynn.
“It’s better nor lyin’ under a hedge,” answered the old man.
“Or under a bridge,” Gourock Ellen remarked, lifting her dress again; then, as if some modest thought had struck her, dropping it suddenly.