We and the World, Part II | Page 5

old woman who was bending over
me.
She was dressed, apparently, in several skirts of unequal lengths, each
one dingier and more useless-looking than the one beneath it. She had a
man's coat, with a short pipe in the breast-pocket; and what her bonnet
was like one could not tell, for it was comfortably tied down by a
crimson handkerchief with big white spots, which covered it
completely. Her face was as crumpled and as dirty as her clothes, but
she had as fine eyes and as kind eyes as mine had ever met. And every
idea of needful wariness and of the wickedness of the world went quite
naturally out of my head, and I said, "Did you think I was dead,
Mother?"
"I did not; though how would I know what would be the matter wid ye,
lying there those three hours on your face, and not a stir out o' ye?"
"You're very kind," I said, dusting the bean-dust off my trousers, and I
suppose I looked a little puzzled, for the old woman (helping me by
flicking at my sleeve) went on: "I'll not deceive ye, my dear. It was my
own Micky that was on my mind; though now you've lifted your face,
barring the colour of his hair, there's no likeness betwixt ye, and I'm the
disappointed woman again, GOD help me!"
"Is Micky your son?" I asked.
"He is, and a better child woman never had, till he tired of everything I
would do for him, being always the boy for a change, and went for a
stowaway from this very port."
"Sit down, Mother; stowaways are lads that hide on board ship, and get
taken to sea for nothing, aren't they?"

"They are, darlin'; but it's not for nothing they get kept at sea, ye may
take your oath. And many's the one that leaves this in the highest of
expictations, and is glad enough to get back to it in a tattered shirt and a
whole skin, and with an increase of contintment under the ways of
home upon his mind."
"And you hope Micky'll come back, I suppose?"
"Why wouldn't I, acushla? Sure it was by reason o' that I got bothered
with the washin' after me poor boy left me, from my mind being
continually in the docks, instead of with the clothes. And there I would
be at the end of the week, with the Captain's jerseys gone to old Miss
Harding, and his washing no corricter than hers, though he'd more good
nature in him over the accidents, and iron-moulds on the table-cloths,
and pocket-handkerchers missin', and me ruined entirely with making
them good, and no thanks for it, till a good-natured sowl of a foreigner
that kept a pie-shop larned me to make the coffee, and lint me the
money to buy a barra, and he says: 'Go as convanient to the ships as ye
can, Mother; it'll aise your mind. My own heart,' says he, laying his
hand to it, 'knows what it is to have my body here, and the whole sowl
of me far away.'"
"Did you pay him back?" I asked. I spoke without thinking, and still
less did I mean to be rude; but it suddenly struck me that I was young
and hearty, and that it would be almost a duty to share the contents of
my leather bag with this poor old woman, if there were no chance of
her being able to repay the generous foreigner.
"Did I pay him back?" she screamed. "Would I be the black-hearted
thief to him that was kind to me? Sorra bit nor sup but dry bread and
water passed me lips till he had his own agin, and the heart's blessings
of owld Biddy Macartney along with it."
I made my peace with old Biddy as well as I could, and turned the
conversation back to her son.
"So you live in the docks with your coffee-barrow, Mother, that you
may be sure not to miss Micky when he comes ashore?"

"I do, darlin'. Fourteen years all but three days. He'll be gone fifteen if
we all live till Wednesday week."
"Fifteen? But, Mother, if he were like me when he went, he can't be
very like me now. He must be a middle-aged man. Do you think you'd
know him?"
This question was more unfortunate than the other, and produced such
howling and weeping, and beating of Biddy's knees as she rocked
herself among the beans, that I should have thought every soul in the
docks would have crowded round us. But no one took any notice of us,
and by degrees I calmed her, chiefly by the assertion--"He'll know you,
Mother, anyhow."
"He will so, GOD bless him!" said she, "And