h him by the night-boat to
be his wife and to live with him in Buenos Ayres where he had a home
waiting for her. How well she remembered the first time she had seen
him; he was lodging in a house on the main road where she used to visit.
It seemed a few weeks ago. He was standing at the gate, his peaked cap
pushed back on his head and his hair tumbled forward over a face of
bronze. Then they had come to know each other. He used to meet her
outside the Stores every evening and see her home. He took her to see
The Bohemian Girl and she felt elated as she sat in an unaccustomed part
of the theatre with him. He was awfully fond of music and sang a little.
People knew that they were courting and, when he sang about the lass
that loves a sailor, she always felt pleasantly confused. He used to
call her Poppens out of fun. First of all it had been an excitement for
her to have a fellow and then she had begun to like him. He had tales of
distant countries. He had started as a deck boy at a pound a month on a
ship of the Allan Line going out to Canada. He told her the names of
the ships he had been on and the names of the different services. He had
sailed through the Straits of Magellan and he told her stories of the
terrible Patagonians. He had fallen on his feet in Buenos Ayres, he
said, and had come over to the old country just for a holiday. Of
course, her father had found out the affair and had forbidden her to
have anything to say to him.

"I know these sailor chaps," he said.

One day he had quarrelled with Frank and after that she had to meet her
lover secretly.

The evening deepened in the avenue. The white of two letters in her lap
grew indistinct. One was to Harry; the other was to her father. Ernest
had been her favourite but she liked Harry too. Her father was becoming
old lately, she noticed; he would miss her. Sometimes he could be very
nice. Not long before, when she had been laid up for a day, he had read
her out a ghost story and made toast for her at the fire. Another day,
when their mother was alive, they had all gone for a picnic to the Hill
of Howth. She remembered her father putting on her mothers bonnet to
make the children laugh.

Her time was running out but she continued to sit by the window,
leaning her head against the window curtain, inhaling the odour of dusty
cretonne. Down far in the avenue she could hear a street organ playing.
She knew the air Strange that it should come that very night to r