that she would like to take her mother on her own breast and rock her
to and fro, crooning soft made-up words and kissing the top of a head
or the half-hidden curve of a cheek, but she did not dare to do so
for fear her mother would strike her. Her mother was very jealous on
that point, she loved her daughter to kiss her and stroke her hands
and her face, but she never liked her to play at being the mother, nor
had she ever encouraged her daughter in the occupations of a doll. She
was the mother and Mary was the baby, and she could not bear to have
her motherhood hindered even in play.

VI

Although Mary Makebelieve was sixteen years of age she had not yet
gone to work; her mother did not like the idea of her little girl
stooping to the drudgery of the only employment she could have aided
her to obtain--that was, to assist herself in the humble and arduous
toil of charing. She had arranged that Mary was to go into a shop, a
drapery store, or some such other, but that was to be in a sometime
which seemed infinitely remote. "And then, too," said Mrs.
Makebelieve, "all kinds of things may happen in a year or so if we
wait. Your uncle Patrick, who went to America twenty years ago, may
come home, and when he does you will not have to work, dearie, nor
will I. Or again, some one going along the street may take a fancy to
you and marry you; things often happen like that." There were a
thousand schemes and accidents which, in her opinion, might occur to
the establishment of her daughter's ease and the enlargement of her
own dignity. And so Mary Makebelieve, when her mother was at work
(which was sometimes every day in the week), had all the day to loiter
in and spend as best she liked. Sometimes she did not go out at all.
She stayed in the top back room sewing or knitting, mending holes in
the sheets or the blankets, or reading books from the Free Library in
Capel Street: but generally she preferred, after the few hours which
served to put the room in order, to go out and walk along the streets,
taking new turnings as often as she fancied, and striking down strange
roads to see the shops and the people.

There were so many people whom she knew by sight; almost daily she saw
these somewhere, and she often followed them for a short distance,
with a feeling of friendship; for the loneliness of the long day
often drew down upon her like a weight, so that even the distant
companionship of these remembered faces that did n