ell fast asleep.

I was awakened by a touch on my head, and a voice just above me, saying:
"He's alive anyhow, thank GOD!" and sitting up among the beans I found
that it was dark and foggy, but a lamp at some distance gave me a pretty
good view of an old woman who was bending over me.

She was dressed, apparently, in several skirts of unequal lengths, each
one dingier and more useless-looking than the one beneath it. She had a
man's coat, with a short pipe in the breast-pocket; and what her bonnet
was like one could not tell, for it was comfortably tied down by a
crimson handkerchief with big white spots, which covered it completely.
Her face was as crumpled and as dirty as her clothes, but she had as
fine eyes and as kind eyes as mine had ever met. And every idea of
needful wariness and of the wickedness of the world went quite naturally
out of my head, and I said, "Did you think I was dead, Mother?"

"I did not; though how would I know what would be the matter wid ye,
lying there those three hours on your face, and not a stir out o' ye?"

"You're very kind," I said, dusting the bean-dust off my trousers, and I
suppose I looked a little puzzled, for the old woman (helping me by
flicking at my sleeve) went on: "I'll not deceive ye, my dear. It was my
own Micky that was on my mind; though now you've lifted your face,
barring the colour of his hair, there's no likeness betwixt ye, and I'm
the disappointed woman again, GOD help me!"

"Is Micky your son?" I asked.

"He is, and a better child woman never had, till he tired of everything
I would do for him, being always the boy for a change, and went for a
stowaway from this very port."

"Sit down, Mother; stowaways are lads that hide on board ship, and get
taken to sea for nothing, aren't they?"

"They are, darlin'; but it's not for nothing they get kept at sea, ye
may take your oath. And many's the one that leaves this in the highest
of expictations, and is glad enough to get back to it in a tattered
shirt and a whole skin, and with an increase of contintment under the
ways of home upon his mind."

"And you hope Micky'll come back, I suppose?"

"Why wouldn't I, acushla? Sure it was by reason o' that I got bothered
with the washin' after me poor boy left me, from my mind being
continually in the docks, instead of with the clothes. And there I would
be at the end of the week, with the Captain's jerseys gone to old Miss
Harding, and _his_ washing no corricter than _