"It's no bother, sure," Nancy declared, emphatically, and her eyes dwelt over-long on her new acquaintance. The lady reminded her of someone, then like a flash it came to her, and she looked again so persistently that the lady was embarrassed. It was Jennie's mother she remembered, the night she came, sick and broken, into the tavern, with her baby in her arms.
"The poor wee thing's fair excited," she murmured, as she cuddled the tiny bundle against her breast.
"Won't you take tea with us?" the mother inquired, her face lighting up at the prospect.
"Ye must just help yerselves from my basket, then," Nancy protested, as she brought it over.
Mrs. Morris, for such was the lady's name, proved an excellent travelling companion. She was not only a splendid conversationalist, but also she knew how to procure warm tea from the porter. Soon she and Nancy were quite at ease with each other, Nancy contributing her share at the entertaining, with her homely gossip of the Monk Road and its people. The baby was her chief solace, however, and its mother only had it during the midnight hours, so constant a nurse was she. And the atom itself was tractable beyond its own mother's belief.
The process of making up the beds in the sleeper gave Nancy an unpleasant half-hour. She did not admire the masculine performances of the porter.
"It's no work for an ignorant black man," she informed Mrs. Morris, in a deprecatory tone. Then she spoke directly to the negro: "Ye can just pull down the cover, an' I'll do me own fixin'."
