“Tuck your legs under ye, agra! on that bit of an ould sack.  Tis what I wrap round me shoulders when the nights do be wet, as it isn’t this evening, thank god!  And there’s the coffee for ye.”

“Mother,” said I, “do you think you could sit so as to hide me for a few minutes?  All the money I have is in a bag round my neck, and I don’t want strangers to see it.”

“Ye’ll just keep it there, then,” replied Biddy, irately, “and don’t go an’ insult me wid the show of it.”

And she turned her back on me, whilst I drank my coffee, and ate some excellent cakes, which formed part of her stock-in-trade.  One of these she insisted on my putting into my pocket “against the hungry hour.”  I thanked her warmly for the gift, whereupon she became mollified, and said I was kindly welcome; and whilst she was serving some customers, I turned round and looked at the ship.  Late as it was, people seemed very busy about her, rather more so than about any I had seen.  As I sat, I was just opposite to a yawning hole in the ship’s side, into which men were noisily running great bales and boxes, which other men on board were lowering into the depths of the vessel with very noisy machinery and with much shouting in a sort of uncouth rhythm, to which the grating and bumping of the crane and its chains was a trifle.  I was so absorbed by looking, and it was so impossible to hear anything else unless one were attending, that I never discovered that Biddy and I were alone again, till the touch of her hand on my head made me jump.

“I beg your pardon, Mother,” I said; “I couldn’t think what it was.”

“I ax yours, dear.  It’s just the curls, and I’m the foolish woman to look at ’em.  Barrin’ the hair, ye don’t favour each other the laste.”

I had really heard a good deal about Micky, and was getting tired of him, and inclined to revert to my own affairs.

“Mother, do you know where this ship comes from?”

“I do not.  But she sails with the morning for Halifax, I’m told.  And that’s America way, and I insensed the cook—­that was him that axed me where I bought my coffee—­to have an eye out for Micky, in case he might come across him anywhere.”

America way!  To-morrow morning!  A storm of thoughts rushed through my head, and in my passionate longing for help I knelt up by the old Irishwoman and laid my hand upon hers.

“Mother dear, do help me!  You are so kind, and you’ve a boy of your own at sea.  I want to go to America, and I’ve no papers or anything.  Couldn’t I stow away as Micky did?  Couldn’t I stow away on this one?  I can work well enough when they find me out, if I could only hide so as to get off; and you know the ships and the docks so well, you could tell me how, if only you would.”

I am always ashamed to remember the feeble way in which I finished off by breaking down, though I do not know that I could have used any argument that would have gone so far with Biddy.  If it had been a man who had been befriending me, I’m sure I shouldn’t have played the fool, but it was a woman, so I felt doubly helpless in having to depend on her, and she felt doubly kind, and, in short, I put my face in my hands and sobbed.