the kitchen, cracking his red, wet fingers
one after the other, and looking most uncomfortable. The wet was running
down from his big frieze coat, but it wasn't that he minded. He was too
well used to soft weather to care about wet clothes. Beside him upon the
floor was the big market-basket, with all manner of paper parcels, blue
and brown, sticking out from under the lid that wouldn't shut down, he
had brought home so much from Melia's shop. But that basket had a
forgotten look about it, because there beside it stood Herself, and she
not asking to unpack it or do a thing with it. She was a little bit of a
woman, that you'd think you could blow off the palm of your hand with
one puff of your breath. As thin as a whip she was, and as straight as a
rush; and she was looking up now at Michael with flaming cheeks and eyes
like troubled waters.

"No letter!" she was saying; "and is it that you brought home no letter,
after you being to the post! Sure it can't be but they wrote to say were
they coming or not, after they being asked here for the Christmas! Sure
I thought you'd surely have word to say when to expect them; and was
thinking even that they might be coming with yourself! Only I suppose
the little ass and dray wouldn't be grand enough for the wife! Of coorse
I didn't think of _her_ writing; she may know no better, and isn't to be
blemt if she has no manners; she can't help the way she was brought up!
But Art! Sure there must be a letter from him...!"

"Wait and I'll try again!" said Big Michael slowly; and then he took to
feel through his pockets again for the letter their son was to have sent
them. But when he had done this, he could only shake his head, so that
the rain-drops fell from his hair and beard--turning brackety grey, they
were, Michael being on in years.

"No, in trath! not as much as one letter have I this night!" he said
slowly.

At this the Woman began to laugh, in spite of the great annoyance that
was on her.

"Sure," she said, "if Mrs. Melia had a letter for us, wouldn't she have
given it to you? What use would _she_ have for it? And if she hadn't,
and told you so, where's the sense in you feeling your pockets over and
over? A body'd think you expected letters to grow there, the same as
American apples in barrels! How could you have there what you didn't put
there? But let you go on off ou'er this now! Look at the state you have
the clean floor in, with the rain dreeping from your _cota-mor_