"Ellen told me that ye were lookin' for meself," she continued. "A man came this mornin'."
"I sent him, Norah," I said. "'Tis good to see you again, darling. I have been looking for you such a long time."
"Have ye?" was all her answer, and gripping my two big hands tightly with her little ones she began to sob like a child.
"It's the kindly way that ye have with ye, Dermod," she went on, sinking back into the bed. Her tearless sobs were almost choking her and she gazed up at the roof with sad, blank eyes. "Ye don't know what I am and the kind of life I have been leadin' for a good lot of years, to come and speak to me again. It's not for a decent man like ye to speak to the likes of my kind! It's meself that has suffered a big lot, too, Dermod, and I deserve pity more than hate. Me sufferin's would have broke the heart of a cold mountainy stone."
"Poor Norah! well do I know what you have suffered," I said. "I have been looking for you for a long while and I want to make you happy now that I have found you."
"Make me happy!" she exclaimed, withdrawing her hands from mine. "What would ye be doin' wantin' to make me happy? I'm dead to ev'rybody, to the people at home, and to me own very mother! What would she want with me now, me, her daughter, and the mother of a child that never had a priest's blessin' on its head? A child without a lawful father! Think of it, Dermod! What would the Glenmornan people say if they met me on the streets? It was a dear child to me, it was. And ye are wantin' to make me happy. Ev'ry time ye come ye say that ye are goin' to make me happy. D'ye mind seein' me on the streets, Dermod?"
"I remember it, Norah," I said. She had spoken of the times I came to see her and I did not understand. Perhaps I came to her in dreams.
"It was the child, Dermod," she rambled on; "it was the little boy and he was dyin', both of a cough that was stickin' in his throat and of starvation. I hadn't seen bread or that what buys it for many's a long hour, even for days itself. I could not get work to do. I tried to beg, but the peelis was goin' to put me in prison, and then there was nothin' for me, Dermod, but to take to the streets.... There was long white boats goin' out and we were watchin' them from the strand of Trienna Bay, Dermod and me. I called him Dermod, but he never got the christenin' words said over him or a drop of holy water.... Where is Ellen? Ellen, ye're a good friend to me, ye are. The people that are sib to meself do not care what happens to one of their own kind, but it's ye yerself that has the good heart, Ellen. And ye say that Dermod Flynn is comin' to see me? I would like to see him again.... I called me little boy after him, too.... Little Dermod, I called him, and now he's dead without the priest's blessin' ever put over him."