The women would have their tea at six o’clock and she would be able to get away before seven.  From Ballsbridge to the Pillar, twenty minutes; from the Pillar to Drumcondra, twenty minutes; and twenty minutes to buy the things.  She would be there before eight.  She took out her purse with the silver clasps and read again the words A Present from Belfast.  She was very fond of that purse because Joe had brought it to her five years before when he and Alphy had gone to Belfast on a Whit-Monday trip.  In the purse were two half-crowns and some coppers.  She would have five shillings clear after paying tram fare.  What a nice evening they would have, all the children singing!  Only she hoped that Joe wouldn’t come in drunk.  He was so different when he took any drink.

Often he had wanted her to go and live with them;-but she would have felt herself in the way (though Joe’s wife was ever so nice with her) and she had become accustomed to the life of the laundry.  Joe was a good fellow.  She had nursed him and Alphy too; and Joe used often say: 

“Mamma is mamma but Maria is my proper mother.”

After the break-up at home the boys had got her that position in the Dublin by Lamplight laundry, and she liked it.  She used to have such a bad opinion of Protestants but now she thought they were very nice people, a little quiet and serious, but still very nice people to live with.  Then she had her plants in the conservatory and she liked looking after them.  She had lovely ferns and wax-plants and, whenever anyone came to visit her, she always gave the visitor one or two slips from her conservatory.  There was one thing she didn’t like and that was the tracts on the walks; but the matron was such a nice person to deal with, so genteel.

When the cook told her everything was ready she went into the women’s room and began to pull the big bell.  In a few minutes the women began to come in by twos and threes, wiping their steaming hands in their petticoats and pulling down the sleeves of their blouses over their red steaming arms.  They settled down before their huge mugs which the cook and the dummy filled up with hot tea, already mixed with milk and sugar in huge tin cans.  Maria superintended the distribution of the barmbrack and saw that every woman got her four slices.  There was a great deal of laughing and joking during the meal.  Lizzie Fleming said Maria was sure to get the ring and, though Fleming had said that for so many Hallow Eves, Maria had to laugh and say she didn’t want any ring or man either; and when she laughed her grey-green eyes sparkled with disappointed shyness and the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin.  Then Ginger Mooney lifted her mug of tea and proposed Maria’s health while all the other women clattered with their mugs on the table, and said she was sorry she hadn’t a sup of porter to drink it in.  And Maria laughed again till the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin and till her minute body nearly shook itself asunder because she knew that Mooney meant well though, of course, she had the notions of a common woman.