“I wouldn’t put it past them, for they were a bad set, the same Gorlachs,” said Maire a Crick. “But for all that, maybe it is that there wasn’t a word of truth in the whole story.”
Norah Ryan, who was now lagging in the rear, got suddenly caught by a heavy gust of wind that blew up from the sea. Her clothes were lifted over her head; she tried to push them down, and the weasel-skin purse which she held in her hand dropped on the roadway. The penny jingled out, the coin which was to procure her bread in Greenanore, and she clutched at it hurriedly. A sudden dizziness overcame her, her brain reeled and she fell prostrate to the wet earth. In an instant the beansho was at her side.
“Norah Ryan, what’s coming over ye?” she cried and knelt down by the girl. The child’s face was deathly pale, the sleet cut her viciously, and her hands, lying palm upwards on the mire, were blue and cold. The beansho tried to raise her but the effort was too much; the child which the woman carried impeded her movements. Maire a Crick now hurried up and the rest of the women approached, though in a more leisurely fashion.
“Mother of God! What’s wrong? What’s wrong?” asked the old woman anxiously. “What has come over the child atall, atall? She’s starving,” the old body went on, kneeling on the roadway and pressing her warty hands on the breast of the young girl. “She’s starving, that’s it. In her own home she hardly eats one bite at all so that her people may have the more. So I have heard tell.... Norah Ryan, for God’s sake wake up!”
The girl gave no heed, made no sign. The sleet sang through the air and the women gathered closer, shielding the little one with their bodies.
“What’s to be done?” asked the beansho. Biddy Wor told how people were cured of fargortha (hunger) at the time of the famine, but little heed was paid to her talk. The beansho unloosened her shawl, wrapped her offspring tightly in it and handed the bundle to one of the women, who crossed herself as she caught it.
“Now up on my back with the girsha,” said the beansho authoritatively, stooping on her knees in the roadway and bending her shoulders. “Martin Eveleen has a house across the rise of the brae and I’ll carry her there.”