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 haven't I gone over it all
in me own mind, often and often, when I'd see the vessels feelin' their
way home through the darkness, and the coffee staymin' enough to cheer
your heart wid the smell of it, and the laste taste in life of something
betther in the stone bottle under me petticoats. And then the big ship
would be coming in with her lights at the head of her, and myself
sitting alone with me patience, GOD helping me, and one and another