eir 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 property 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-coloured skins, cracking, showed a fair flouriness within;
and she shook a little heap of salt, the only relish she had, on to 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 afterwards
the Sheridan's, 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, and next, with a rough shock of dismay, that her cloak no
longer l