Nevertheless all went well down to the day of my departure.  It had been arranged that I was to sail to Liverpool by the first of the two daily steamers, and without any awakening I leapt out of bed at the first sign of daylight.  So great was my delight that I began to dance in my nightdress to an invisible skipping rope, forgetting my father, who always rose at dawn and was at breakfast in the room below.

My mother and I breakfasted in bed, and then there was great commotion.  It chiefly consisted for me in putting on my new clothes, including my furs, and then turning round and round on tiptoe and smiling at myself in a mirror.  I was doing this while my mother was telling me to write to her as often as I was allowed, and while she knelt at her prayer stool, which she used as a desk, to make a copy of the address for my letters.

Then I noticed that the first line of her superscription “Mrs. Daniel O’Neill” was blurred by the tears that were dropping from her eyes, and my throat began to hurt me dreadfully.  But I remembered what Father Dan had told me to do, so I said: 

“Never mind, mammy.  Don’t worry—­I’ll be home for the holidays.”

Soon afterwards we heard the carriage wheels passing under the window, and then Father Dan came up in a white knitted muffler, and with a funny bag which he used for his surplice at funerals, and said, through a little cloud of white breath, that everything was ready.

I saw that my mother was turning round and taking out her pocket-handkerchief, and I was snuffling a little myself, but at a sign from Father Dan, who was standing at the threshold.  I squeezed back the water in my eyes and cried: 

“Good-bye mammy.  I’ll be back for Christmas,” and then darted across to the door.

I was just passing through it when I heard my mother say “Mary” in a strange low voice, and I turned and saw her—­I can see her still—­with her beautiful pale face all broken up, and her arms held out to me.

Then I rushed back to her, and she clasped me to her breast crying, “Mally veen!  My Mally veen!” and I could feel her heart beating through her dress and hear the husky rattle in her throat, and then all our poor little game of make-believe broke down utterly.

At the next moment my father was calling upstairs that I should be late for the steamer, so my mother dried her own eyes and then mine, and let me go.

Father Dan was gone when I reached the head of the stairs but seeing Nessy MacLeod and Betsy Beauty at the bottom of them I soon recovered my composure, and sailing down in my finery I passed them in stately silence with my little bird-like head in the air.

I intended to do the same with Aunt Bridget, who was standing with a shawl over her shoulders by the open door, but she touched me and said: 

“Aren’t you going to kiss me good-bye, then?”

“No,” I answered, drawing my little body to its utmost height.