Norah looked up at the woman. Ellen’s pock-marked face was still full of the same unfailing good nature which belonged to her years before when she worked in Micky’s Jim’s squad.
“I dinna ken. She went off with a man and I haven’t seen her never since.” Ellen smiled, but so slightly that the smile did not change the expression of her eyes.
“Ye don’t tell me! And ye’ve never been back at the squad again?”
“Never back. I was times workin’ at the rag-pickin’ and times gatherin’ coal from the free coup.”
“That’s what Mary Martin done,” Norah exclaimed. “She was a woman known to me.”
“And ye kent old Mary!” said Ellen. “Me and her have worked together for many’s a day, makin’ a shillin’ a day each at the job.”
“Are ye feelin’ a wee better, Norah?” she asked presently.
“I’m fine, Ellen,” was the answer. “I could get up and run about and I’m not in the least sleepy. What were the corner boys wantin’ to do?”
“My purse, Ellen! Have they taken it from me?” Norah searched nervously in the pockets of her dress.
“Mother of God! I haven’t one penny now, Ellen, not one brown penny!” Norah exclaimed. “It’ll be the streets for me again.”
“We’ll get along somehow, if we work together,” said Ellen.
“We’ll work together; that’s the way,” Norah whispered after a moment’s consideration.
“Twa is always better than yin,” Ellen replied.
Norah looked closely at the woman as if puzzling out something; then her eyes closed gently and quietly and she fell asleep. She awoke several times during the night, mumbled incoherent words, then sank into a deep slumber again. And all night Gourock Ellen watched over Norah Ryan. Morning found her still sitting beside the bed, weary-eyed but patient, her eyes fixed on the face of the sleeping girl.
In the morning Norah was in a raging fever. She spoke in her delirium of many things, prattling like a child about the sea and curraghs of Frosses going out beyond Trienna Bar in the grey dusk of the harvest evening. She held conversation with people visible to none but herself: with Fergus, with Dermod Flynn, with her mother, with the dead child. The girl’s whole history for the last three years was thus disclosed to Gourock Ellen. Days came and went; the patient became no better. A doctor was called in; he applied his stethoscope to Norah’s chest and shook his head gravely.