ays at
Lisconnel, the Tinkers had already begun to establish their reputation.
So when he stopped in front of her and said, "Good-day, ma'am," she only
replied distantly, "It's a hardy mornin'," and hoped he would move on.
But he said, "It's cruel could, ma'am," and continued to stand looking
at her with wide and woful eyes, in which she conjectured--erroneously,
as it happened--hunger for warmth or food. Under these circumstances,
what could be done by a woman who was conscious of owning a redly
glowing hearth with a big black pot, fairly well filled, clucking and
bobbing upon it? To possess such wealth as this, and think seriously of
withholding a share from anybody who urges the incontestable claim of
wanting it, is a mood altogether foreign to Lisconnel, where the
responsibilities of poverty are no doubt very imperfectly understood.
Accordingly Mrs. Kilfoyle said to the tattered tramp, "Ah, thin, step
inside and have a couple of hot pitaties." And when he accepted the
invitation without much alacrity, as if he had something else on his
mind, she picked for him out of the steam two of the biggest potatoes,
whose earth-colored skins, cracking, showed a fair flouriness within;
and she shook a little heap of salt, the only relish she had, onto the
chipped white plate as she handed it to him, saying, "Sit you down be
the fire, there, and git a taste of the heat."

Then she lifted her old shawl over her head, and ran out to see where at
all Brian and Thady were gettin' their deaths on her under the pours of
rain; and as she passed the Keoghs' adjacent door--which was afterward
the Sheridans', whence their Larry departed so reluctantly--young Mrs.
Keogh called her to come in and look at "the child," who, being a new
and unique possession, was liable to develop alarmingly strange
symptoms, and had now "woke up wid his head that hot, you might as well
put your hand on the hob of the grate." Mrs. Kilfoyle stayed only long
enough to suggest, as a possible remedy, a drop of two-milk whey. "But
ah, sure, woman dear, where at all 'ud we come by that, wid the crathur
of a goat scarce wettin' the bottom of the pan?" and to draw reassuring
omens from the avidity with which the invalid grabbed at a sugared
crust. In fact, she was less than five minutes out of her house; but
when she returned to it, she found it empty. First, she noted with a
moderate thrill of surprise that her visitor had gone away leaving his
potatoes untouched; an