Part 10 (1/2)
that's not beyond a bit o' pleasure an' the sight o' my boy. It's such a time since I've seen the lad that I'm most afeared I'll not be knowin' me own son.”
”Tut, tut! You don't think that. I'd know a McVeigh anywhere if I met him,” the priest expostulated.
”I've been savin' me odd change these two or three years, an' I've plinty to pay me way comfortably. I'm wonderin', though, how the ould place would git on without me!” Nancy remarked, dubiously.
”Never suffer in the least,” the priest affirmed.
”Ye may think so, but whin I've been here day in an' day out since me hair was as fair as Katie Duncan's, ye can understand it takes a deal o' courage fer me to trust to others,” she retorted.
The priest nodded his head slowly in acquiescence.
Two weeks of laborious calculations and preparations preceded the day set for Nancy's departure, and during the interval her many friends discussed the journey so fully with her that her mind was a maze of conflicting doubts. But her contumacious nature did not permit a retreat from her decision, and to make it utterly impossible she went over to the new station and gave over forty-eight dollars for a ticket.
It seemed a reckless expenditure, but a peep every night at the photographs on the wall of her room drove the mercenary aspect of it from her and left her firmly resolved and intensely happy.
The fateful hour came at last, and quite a gathering of familiar faces was at the station to see her depart. Father Doyle, Mrs. Jim Bennet and family, Katie Duncan, Mrs. Conors, old Donald, Dr. Dodona and wife, the two Piper children and a host of others saw that she was comfortably established in the big car, much to the evident amus.e.m.e.nt of the loitering tourists. She must have kissed at least twenty people before the conductor came briskly on the scene and sent them pell-mell on to the platform. The whistle shrieked and the train glided slowly away. Nancy, a strange figure, with widow's bonnet, bright colored shawl and face wreathed in smiles, leaned far out of the window, waving an answer to the shouted farewells.
Mistress McVeigh spent a major portion of the evening in getting acquainted with her environments. Her previous ride in the cars had been her honeymoon, but that was so long ago that she had forgotten even the sensation. Its novelty now intruded on her peace of mind, and she enjoyed it, although it was tiring. She sat gazing about in silent contemplation until the lamps had been lighted and the negro porter was shouting his evening dinner call. His words reminded her that she had a basket of good things, so she took off her bonnet, spread her shawl on the adjacent seat and proceeded to lay out the contents. Most of the people in the coach were going forward to the diner, but such extravagance did not appeal to her. But she did notice that a very delicately featured lady, with a small baby and a boy of two or three, was endeavoring with patient though apparently ineffectual effort to satisfy the fretful wants of her little ones. The worried flush in the young mother's cheek, and the trembling of her lips, roused Nancy's compa.s.sionate nature, and, although she would not have confessed it, she was lonesome. To be amongst people unspoken to and unnoticed was a revelation that had never existed in her tiny world. She watched the struggling woman covertly for a short time, while she nibbled at her lunch, and then she could bear it no longer, so she stepped across the aisle.
”If ye please, ma'am, I'll take the baby fer a spell, while ye give the boy his supper,” she volunteered.
The lady shot a grateful glance at the queer old body who had accosted her.
”If you don't mind the bother,” she replied, sweetly.
”It's no bother, sure,” Nancy declared, emphatically, and her eyes dwelt over-long on her new acquaintance. The lady reminded her of someone, then like a flash it came to her, and she looked again so persistently that the lady was embarra.s.sed. It was Jennie's mother she remembered, the night she came, sick and broken, into the tavern, with her baby in her arms.
”The poor wee thing's fair excited,” she murmured, as she cuddled the tiny bundle against her breast.
”Won't you take tea with us?” the mother inquired, her face lighting up at the prospect.
”Ye must just help yerselves from my basket, then,” Nancy protested, as she brought it over.
Mrs. Morris, for such was the lady's name, proved an excellent travelling companion. She was not only a splendid conversationalist, but also she knew how to procure warm tea from the porter. Soon she and Nancy were quite at ease with each other, Nancy contributing her share at the entertaining, with her homely gossip of the Monk Road and its people. The baby was her chief solace, however, and its mother only had it during the midnight hours, so constant a nurse was she.
And the atom itself was tractable beyond its own mother's belief.
The process of making up the beds in the sleeper gave Nancy an unpleasant half-hour. She did not admire the masculine performances of the porter.
”It's no work for an ignorant black man,” she informed Mrs. Morris, in a deprecatory tone. Then she spoke directly to the negro: ”Ye can just pull down the cover, an' I'll do me own fixin'.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”Ye can just pull down the cover, an' I'll do me own fixin'.”]
”Yes, mum,” he answered, grinning, but he did not desist from his duties.
”He's one of thim furriners, who don't know what ye're sayin', I suppose,” she observed, resignedly.
When the conductor made his last round of the cars, before the lamps were extinguished, Nancy stopped him and questioned anxiously, ”Ye'll be sure to waken me at Chicago?”
”Why, ma'am, we won't arrive there until tomorrow evening,” he answered.
”So ye say, but I'm strange to the run o' trains, an' I don't want to be goin' miles past the place and niver know it,” she objected.