but Maria is my proper mother."

After the break-up at home the boys had got her that position in the
Dublin by Lamplight laundry, and she liked it. She used to have such
a bad opinion of Protestants but now she thought they were very nice
people, a little quiet and serious, but still very nice people to live
with. Then she had her plants in the conservatory and she liked looking
after them. She had lovely ferns and wax-plants and, whenever anyone
came to visit her, she always gave the visitor one or two slips from
her conservatory. There was one thing she didn't like and that was the
tracts on the walks; but the matron was such a nice person to deal with,
so genteel.

When the cook told her everything was ready she went into the women's
room and began to pull the big bell. In a few minutes the women began
to come in by twos and threes, wiping their steaming hands in their
petticoats and pulling down the sleeves of their blouses over their red
steaming arms. They settled down before their huge mugs which the cook
and the dummy filled up with hot tea, already mixed with milk and sugar
in huge tin cans. Maria superintended the distribution of the barmbrack
and saw that every woman got her four slices. There was a great deal of
laughing and joking during the meal. Lizzie Fleming said Maria was sure
to get the ring and, though Fleming had said that for so many Hallow
Eves, Maria had to laugh and say she didn't want any ring or man either;
and when she laughed her grey-green eyes sparkled with disappointed
shyness and the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin. Then
Ginger Mooney lifted her mug of tea and proposed Maria's health while
all the other women clattered with their mugs on the table, and said she
was sorry she hadn't a sup of porter to drink it in. And Maria laughed
again till the tip of her nose nearly met the tip of her chin and till
her minute body nearly shook itself asunder because she knew that Mooney
meant well though, of course, she had the notions of a common woman.

But wasn't Maria glad when the women had finished their tea and the cook
and the dummy had begun to clear away the tea-things! She went into
her little bedroom and, remembering that the next morning was a mass
morning, changed the hand of the alarm from seven to six. Then she took
off her working skirt and her house-boots and laid her best skirt out on
the bed and her tiny dress-boots beside the foot of the bed. She changed
her blou