is hat to her gaily.

"We'll make a new man of him," he said. "Good-night, Mrs. Kernan."

Mrs. Kernan's puzzled eyes watched the car till it was out of sight.
Then she withdrew them, went into the house and emptied her husband's
pockets.

She was an active, practical woman of middle age. Not long before she
had celebrated her silver wedding and renewed her intimacy with her
husband by waltzing with him to Mr. Power's accompaniment. In her days
of courtship, Mr. Kernan had seemed to her a not ungallant figure: and
she still hurried to the chapel door whenever a wedding was reported
and, seeing the bridal pair, recalled with vivid pleasure how she had
passed out of the Star of the Sea Church in Sandymount, leaning on the
arm of a jovial well-fed man, who was dressed smartly in a frock-coat
and lavender trousers and carried a silk hat gracefully balanced upon
his other arm. After three weeks she had found a wife's life irksome
and, later on, when she was beginning to find it unbearable, she had
become a mother. The part of mother presented to her no insuperable
difficulties and for twenty-five years she had kept house shrewdly for
her husband. Her two eldest sons were launched. One was in a draper's
shop in Glasgow and the other was clerk to a tea-merchant in Belfast.
They were good sons, wrote regularly and sometimes sent home money. The
other children were still at school.

Mr. Kernan sent a letter to his office next day and remained in bed. She
made beef-tea for him and scolded him roundly. She accepted his frequent
intemperance as part of the climate, healed him dutifully whenever he
was sick and always tried to make him eat a breakfast. There were worse
husbands. He had never been violent since the boys had grown up, and she
knew that he would walk to the end of Thomas Street and back again to
book even a small order.

Two nights after, his friends came to see him. She brought them up to
his bedroom, the air of which was impregnated with a personal odour,
and gave them chairs at the fire. Mr. Kernan's tongue, the occasional
stinging pain of which had made him somewhat irritable during the day,
became more polite. He sat propped up in the bed by pillows and the
little colour in his puffy cheeks made them resemble warm cinders. He
apologised to his guests for the disorder of the room, but at the same
time looked at them a little proudly, with a veteran's pride.

He was quite unconscious that he was the victim of