Mary halted in amazement in the doorway. She could not grasp all the pandemonium at once, and while she stood Mrs. Cafferty saw her.
"Come on in, honey," said she. "Your ma's as right as a trivet. All she wanted was a bit of good company and some children to play with. Deed," she continued, "children are the best medicine for a woman that I know of. They don't give you time to be sick, the creatures! Patrick John, I'll give you a smack on the side of the head if you don't let your little sister alone; and don't you, Norah, be vexing him or you'll deserve all you get. Run inside, Julia Elizabeth, cut a slice of bread for the twins, and put a bit of sugar on it, honey. Yes, Alanna, you can have a slice for yourself, too, you poor child you, well you deserve it."
Mrs. Makebelieve was sitting up in the bed with two pillows propping up her back. One of her long thin arms was stretched out to preserve the twins from being bruised against the wall in their play. Plainly they had become great friends with her, for every now and then they swarmed over her, and a hugging match of extreme complexity ensued. She looked almost her usual self, and all the animation which had been so marked a feature of her personality had returned to her.
"Are you better, mother?" said Mary.
Mrs. Makebelieve took her daughter's head in her hands and kissed her until the twins butted them apart, clamouring for caresses.
"I am, honey," said she. "Those children done me good. I could have got up at one o'clock, I felt so well, but Mrs. Cafferty thought I'd better not."
"I did so," said Mrs. Cafferty. "Not a foot do you stir out of that bed till your daughter comes home, ma'm,' said I. For do you see, child, many's the time you'd be thinking you were well and feeling as fit as a fiddle, and nothing would be doing you but to be up and gallivanting about, and then the next day you'd have a relapse, and the next day you'd be twice as bad, and the day after that they'd be measuring you for your coffin maybe. I knew a woman was taken like that--up she got; I'm as well as ever I was,' said she, and she ate a feed of pig's cheek and cabbage and finished her washing, and they buried her in a week. It's the quare thing sickness. What I say is, when you're sick get into bed and stop there."
"It's easy saying that," said Mrs. Makebelieve.
"Sure, don't I know, you poor thing you," said Mrs. Cafferty; "but you should stay in bed as long as you are able to, anyhow."
"How did you get on with Mrs. O'Connor?" said Mrs. Makebelieve.
"That's the mistress, isn't it?" queried Mrs. Cafferty; "an ould devil, I'll bet you."
Mrs. Makebelieve rapidly and lightly sketched Mrs. O'Connor's leading peculiarities.
"It's queer the people one has to work for, God knows it is," said Mrs. Cafferty.
At this point a grave controversy on work might have arisen, but the children, caring little for conversation, broke into so tumultuous play that talk could not be proceeded with. Mary was enticed into a game composed in part of pussy-four-corners and tip-and-tig, with a general flavour of leap-frog working through. In five minutes her hair and her stockings were both down, and the back of her skirt had crawled three-quarters round to the front. The twins shouted and bumped on the bed, upon which and on Mrs. Makebelieve they rubbed bread and butter and sugar, while their mother roared an anecdote at Mrs. Makebelieve in tones that ruled the din as a fog-horn rules the waves.
XX
Mary had lavished the entire of her first day's wages on delicate foods wherewith to tempt her mother's languid appetite, and when the morning dawned she arose silently, lit the fire, wet the tea, and spread her purchases out on the side of the bed. There was a slice of brawn, two pork sausages, two eggs, three rashers of bacon, a bun, a pennyworth of sweets, and a pig's foot. These with bread and butter and tea made a collection amid which an invalid might browse with some satisfaction. Mary then awakened her, and sat by in a dream of happiness watching her mother's eye roll slowly and unbelievingly from item to item. Mrs. Makebelieve tipped each article with her first finger and put its right name on it unerringly. Then she picked out an important-looking sweet that had four colours and shone like the sun, and put it in her mouth.
"I never saw anything like it, you good child you," said she.
Mary rocked herself to and fro and laughed loudly for delight, and then they ate a bit of everything, and were very happy.
Mrs. Makebelieve said that she felt altogether better that morning. She had slept like a top all through the night, and, moreover, had a dream wherein she saw her brother Patrick standing on the remotest sea point of distant America, from whence he had shouted loudly across the ocean that he was coming back to Ireland soon, that he had succeeded very well indeed, and that he was not married. He had not changed in the slightest degree, said Mrs. Makebelieve, and he looked as young and as jolly as when he was at home with her father and herself in the County Meath twenty-two years before. This mollifying dream and the easy sleep which followed it had completely restored her health and spirits.
