“Hallo, Corley!”

Corley turned his head to see who had called him, and then continued walking as before.  Lenehan ran after him, settling the waterproof on his shoulders with one hand.

“Hallo, Corley!” he cried again.

He came level with his friend and looked keenly in his face.  He could see nothing there.

“Well?” he said.  “Did it come off?”

They had reached the corner of Ely Place.  Still without answering, Corley swerved to the left and went up the side street.  His features were composed in stern calm.  Lenehan kept up with his friend, breathing uneasily.  He was baffled and a note of menace pierced through his voice.

“Can’t you tell us?” he said.  “Did you try her?”

Corley halted at the first lamp and stared grimly before him.  Then with a grave gesture he extended a hand towards the light and, smiling, opened it slowly to the gaze of his disciple.  A small gold coin shone in the palm.

THE BOARDING HOUSE

Mrs. Mooney was a butcher’s daughter.  She was a woman who was quite able to keep things to herself:  a determined woman.  She had married her father’s foreman and opened a butcher’s shop near Spring Gardens.  But as soon as his father-in-law was dead Mr. Mooney began to go to the devil.  He drank, plundered the till, ran headlong into debt.  It was no use making him take the pledge:  he was sure to break out again a few days after.  By fighting his wife in the presence of customers and by buying bad meat he ruined his business.  One night he went for his wife with the cleaver and she had to sleep a neighbour’s house.

After that they lived apart.  She went to the priest and got a separation from him with care of the children.  She would give him neither money nor food nor house-room; and so he was obliged to enlist himself as a sheriff’s man.  He was a shabby stooped little drunkard with a white face and a white moustache white eyebrows, pencilled above his little eyes, which were veined and raw; and all day long he sat in the bailiff’s room, waiting to be put on a job.  Mrs. Mooney, who had taken what remained of her money out of the butcher business and set up a boarding house in Hardwicke Street, was a big imposing woman.  Her house had a floating population made up of tourists from Liverpool and the Isle of Man and, occasionally, artistes from the music halls.  Its resident population was made up of clerks from the city.  She governed the house cunningly and firmly, knew when to give credit, when to be stern and when to let things pass.  All the resident young men spoke of her as The Madam.