ave a cough, neither
was she worrying about the unpaid rent. Mrs. Durgan, speaking strictly
in a physical sense, was mightiest among women in Big Cloud, and on the
night the story proper opens--a very black night for Sammy
Durgan--Sammy Durgan was sitting on Mrs. Durgan's front door step, and
the door was locked upon him. Sammy Durgan, paradoxical as it may
sound, though temporarily out of a job again and with no job to be
fired from, was being fired at that moment harder than he had ever been
fired before in his life--and the firing was being done by Mrs. Durgan.
It had been threatening for quite a while, quite a long while, two or
three years, but it none the less came to Sammy Durgan with something
of a shock, and he gasped.

Mrs. Durgan was intensely Irish, from purer stock than Sammy Durgan,
and through the window Mrs. Durgan spoke barbed words:

"'Tis shame yez should take to yersilf, Sammy Durgan, if yez had the
sinse to take annything--the loikes av yez, a big strong man! 'Tis
years I've put up wid yez, whin another woman would not, but I'll put
up wid yez no more! 'Tis the ind this night, Sammy Durgan, an' the
Holy Mither be praised there's no children to blush fer the disgrace
yez are!"

"Maria," said Sammy Durgan craftily, for this had worked before, "do I
drink?"

Mrs. Durgan choked in her rage.

"I do not," said Sammy Durgan soothingly. "And who but me lays the pay
envelopes on your lap without so much as tearing 'em to count the
insides of 'em? Listen here, Maria, listen----"

"Is ut mocking me, yez are!" shrieked Mrs. Durgan. "'Tis little good
the opening av 'em would do! Listen, is ut, to the smooth tongue av
yez! I've listened till me fingers are bare to the bone wid the
washtubs to kape a roof over me head. I'll listen no more, Sammy
Durgan, moind thot!"

"Maria," said Sammy Durgan, with a softness that was meant to turn away
wrath, "Maria, open the door."

"I will not," said Mrs. Durgan, with a truculent gasp. "Niver! Not
while yez live, Sammy Durgan--fer yez funeral mabbe, but fer no less
than thot, an' thin only fer the joy av bein' a widdy!"

It sounded inevitable. There was a sort of cold uncompromise even in
the fire of Mrs. Durgan's voice. Sammy Durgan rose heavily from the
doorstep.

"Some day," said Sammy Durgan sadly, "some day, Maria, you'll be sorry
for this. You'll break your heart for it, Maria! You wait! 'Tis no
fault of mine, the trouble. Everybody's agai