"Good reason I have to fear the drink; 't was that spoiled my mother's life."
"No; the saints preserve us!" She looked up in surprise at Larry's startled face. "It was my father. I don't remember only what mother told me; he left her one night, ravin' drunk, an' never come back."
"I must be goin' back to the ship now," he said abruptly. "An' thank you, Mary, for the tea." He hurried from the room.
When Larry reached the ground floor he heard Mary's door open again.
"Can I be troublin' you, Mouse, to take something to Dan?" She came down the stairs, carrying a dinner-pail. "I'd thought to be eatin' this supper along with him," Mary said, disappointment in her tone. She followed Larry to the outer landing. "It's the true word you was sayin', he'll be makin' Dan water-tender?"
Larry forced himself to look into her anxious eyes.
"Then I'll pray this night to the Mother of God for that chief; for soon"--Mary hesitated; a light came to her face that lifted the girl high above her squalid surroundings--"the extra pay'll be comin' handy soon," she ended, her voice as soft as a Killarney breeze.
Larry, as he looked at the young wife standing between the scarred columns of the old doorway, was stirred to the farthest corner of his heart.
"They only smile like that to the angels," he thought. Then aloud: "Bad cess to me! I was forgettin' entirely! Dan said to leave this with you." He pushed crumpled, coal-soiled money into her hand, and fled down the steps.
When Larry heard the door close creakily behind him, he looked back to where Mary had stood, his eyes blinking rapidly. After some moments he walked slowly on toward the wharves. In the distance before him the spars and funnels of ships loomed through the dusk, their outlines rapidly fading into the sky beyond--a late September sky, now fast turning to a burned-out sheet of dull gray.
Larry went aboard his ship, and, going to the forecastle, peered into an upper bunk.
"Your baby's not to home, Mouse," a voice jeered. "I saw him over to Flanagan's awhile ago."
"Give me a hand up the side, like a good lad, Jim, when I come aboard again."
A few minutes later the little man was making his way back to the steamer, every step of his journey harassed by derisive shouts as he dodged between the lines of belated trucks that jammed West Street from curb to string-piece. He pushed a wheelbarrow before him, his knees bending under the load it held. Across the barrow, legs and head dangling over the sides, lay an unconscious heap that when sober answered to the name of Dan Sullivan.