!"

"Coming down it is, like as if it was out of a sieve!" said Michael;
"and wasn't it God that done it, that I took the notion to cut the
holly'n'ivy while the day was someways fine, afore I started off to the
shop! Has it safe below ... so I'll just go for it now, the way we can
be settling out the Crib and all ..."

"There'll no holly'n'ivy go up on these walls to-night, if I'm to be let
have a say in the business!" said Mrs. Moloney. "Sich trash and
nonsense! making mess and trouble for them that has plenty to do without
that! And as for the Crib, let it stop where it is ..."

On the word she went back to her stool in the chimney-corner, where she
always sat bolt upright, and took up her knitting, the same as if it
wasn't the Christmas Eve at all. For Art, their only child, that
stocking was meant. But her hands were shaking so much that she dropped
more stitches off the needles than she made, and still she persevered.
Big Michael looked at her for a bit, very pitiful; even opened his mouth
once, as if he wanted to say something; a nice, silent person he was,
very even-going in himself. But he must have thought better of it, for
he only shook his head again, and turned and went off out of the door
into the wild storm and darkness, with the wind howling and threatening
all about the bog and country-side, the shockingest ever you knew.

And as soon as he was gone, didn't the Woman throw down her knitting,
and laid her head upon her knees, and cried and cried, till her blue
checky apron was like as if it was after being wrung out of a tub of
suds.

"Och, Art!" she'd cry, "isn't this the queer way for you to be going on!
To say you never answered the letter that was wrote to you! This very
day five-and-twenty years you came here to us! as lovely as a little
angel you were! The grand big blue eyes of you! and the way you'd laugh
up at me and put out the little hand...! And you the only one ever God
sent us! And never a word between us, only when you took the notion to
go off to Dublin; sure it near broke our hearts, but what could we do,
only give you our blessing! And ... and then hearing the good accounts
of the way you were going on.... But it's the wife that done it all, and
has him that changed...! Too grand she is, no doubt, for the likes of
us! Och, grand how-are-ye! no, but not half good enough for Art! He that
was always counted a choice boy by all that knew him! And any word them
that saw the wife beyant