“Why wouldn’t I, acushla?  Sure, it was by reason o’ that I got bothered with the washin’ after me poor boy left me, from my mind being continually in the docks instead of with the clothes.  And there I would be at the end of the week, with the captain’s jerseys gone to old Miss Harding, and his washing no corricter than hers, though he’d more good-nature in him over the accidents, and iron-moulds on the table-cloths, and pocket-handkerchers missin’, and me ruined intirely with making them good, and no thanks for it, till a good-natured sowl of a foreigner that kept a pie-shop larned me to make the coffee, and lint me the money to buy a barra, and he says, ’Go as convanient to the ships as ye can, mother:  it’ll ease your mind.  My own heart,’ says he, laying his hand to it, ’knows what it is to have my body here, and the whole sowl of me far away.’”

“Did you pay him back?” I asked.  I spoke without thinking, and still less did I mean to be rude; but it had suddenly struck me that I was young and hearty, and that it would be almost a duty to share the contents of my leather bag with this poor old woman, if there were no chance of her being able to repay the generous foreigner.

“Did I pay him back?” she screamed.  “Would I be the black-hearted thief to him that was kind to me?  Sorra bit nor sup but dry bread and water passed me lips till he had his own again, and the heart’s blessings of owld Biddy Macartney along with it.”

     I made my peace with old Biddy as well as I could, and turned the
     conversation back to her son.

     “So you live in the docks with your coffee-barrow, mother, that you
     may be sure not to miss Micky when he comes ashore?”

     “I do, darlin’!  Fourteen years all but three days!  He’ll be gone
     fifteen if we all live till Wednesday week.”

     “Fifteen? But, mother, if he were like me when he went, he can’t
     be very like me now.  He must be a middle-aged man.  Do you think
     you’d know him?”

This question was more unfortunate than the other, and produced such howling and weeping, and beating of Biddy’s knees as she rocked herself among the beans, that I should have thought every soul in the docks would have crowded round us.  But no one took any notice, and by degrees I calmed her, chiefly by the assertion—­“He’ll know you, mother, anyhow.”

“He will so, GOD bless him!” said she.  “And haven’t I gone over it all in me own mind, often and often, when I’d see the vessels feelin’ their way home through the darkness, and the coffee staymin’ enough to cheer your heart wid the smell of it, and the least taste in life of something betther in the stone bottle under me petticoats.  And then the big ship would be coming in with her lights at the head of her, and myself would be sitting alone with me patience, GOD helping me,