Mary shrank back into the shadow of the doorway. She had a strange notion that everybody was trying to look at her, and that they were all laughing maliciously. After a few moments she stepped out on the path and walked homewards quickly. She did not hear the noises of the streets, nor see the promenading crowds. Her face was bent down as she walked, and beneath the big brim of her straw hat her eyes were blinded with the bitterest tears she had ever shed.
XV
Next morning her mother was no better. She made no attempt to get out of bed, and listened with absolute indifference when the morning feet of the next-door man pounded the stairs. Mary awakened her again and again, but each time, after saying “All right, dearie,” she relapsed to a slumber which was more torpor than sleep. Her yellow, old-ivory face was faintly tinged with colour; her thin lips were relaxed, and seemed a trifle fuller, so that Mary thought she looked better in sickness than in health; but the limp arm lying on the patchwork quilt seemed to be more skinny than thin, and the hand was more waxen and claw-like than heretofore.
Mary laid the breakfast on the bed as usual, and again awakened her mother, who, after staring into vacancy for a few moments, forced herself to her elbow, and then, with sudden determination, sat up in the bed and bent her mind inflexibly on her breakfast. She drank two cups of tea greedily, but the bread had no taste in her mouth, and after swallowing a morsel she laid it aside.
“I don’t know what’s up with me at all, at all,” said she.
“Maybe it’s a cold, mother,” replied Mary.
“Do I look bad, now?”
Mary scrutinised her narrowly.
“No,” she answered; “your face is redder than it does be, and your eyes are shiny. I think you look splendid and well. What way do you feel?”
“I don’t feel at all, except that I’m sleepy. Give me the glass in my hand, dearie, till I see what I’m like.”
Mary took the glass from the wall and handed it to her.
“I don’t look bad at all. A bit of colour always suited me. Look at my tongue, though, it’s very, very dirty; it’s a bad tongue altogether. My mother had a tongue like that, Mary, when she died.”
“Have you any pain?” said her daughter.
“No, dearie; there is a buzz in the front of my head as if something was spinning round and round very quickly, and that makes my eyes tired, and there’s a sort of feeling as if my head was twice as heavy as it should be. Hang up the glass again. I’ll try and get a sleep, and maybe I’ll be better when I waken up. Run you out and get a bit of steak, and we’ll stew it down and make beef-tea, and maybe that will do me good. Give me my purse out of the pocket of my skirt.”
Mary found the purse and brought it to the bed. Her mother opened it and brought out a thimble, a bootlace, five buttons, one sixpenny piece and a penny. She gave Mary the sixpence.
“Get half a pound of leg beef,” said she, “and then we’ll have fourpence left for bread and tea: no, take the other penny, too, and get half a pound of pieces at the butcher’s for twopence, and a twopenny tin of condensed milk, that’s fourpence; and a three-ha’penny loaf and one penny for tea, that’s sixpence ha’penny; and get onions with the odd ha’penny, and we’ll put them in the beef-tea. Don’t forget, dearie, to pick lean bits of meat; them fellows do be always trying to stick bits of bone and gristle on a body. Tell him it’s for beef-tea for your mother, and that I’m not well at all, and ask how Mrs. Quinn is; she hasn’t been down in the shop for a long time. I’ll go to sleep now. I’ll have to go to work in the morning whatever happens, because there isn’t any money in the house at all. Come home as quick as you can, dearie.”
Mary dressed herself and went out for the provisions, but she did not buy them at once. As she went down the street she turned suddenly, clasping her hands in a desperate movement, and walked very quickly in the opposite direction. She turned up the side streets to the quays, and along these to the Park gates. Her hands were clasping and unclasping in an agony of impatience, and her eyes roved busily here and there, flying among the few pedestrians like lanterns. She went through the gates and up the broad central path, and here she walked more slowly: but she did not see the flowers behind the railings, or even the sunshine that bathed the world in glory. At the monument she sped a furtive glance down the road she had travelled—there was nobody behind her. She turned into the fields, walking under trees which she did not see,
