" Then to the sister-in-law:
"I've a wash myself today."
The big shoes that must once have belonged to the visitor's man, hit the
floor loosely as she walked slowly out. Then as lodger I was given the only
chair at the breakfast-table. The mother and girl sat at a plank bench and
supped their tea from their saucerless cups. As there was no place else to
sit, the children took their bread and jam as they perched on the bed, and
when they finished, surreptitiously wiped their fingers on the
brown-covered hay mattress. Before we were through, they had run to the
street and back to warm their cold legs inside the fender till the floor
was tracked with mud from the street, ashes from the grate, and bits of
crumbled bread.
In the evening I heard the murmur of revolution. With the shawled mothers
who line the lane on a pleasant evening, I stood between the widow and a
twenty-year-old girl who held her tiny blind baby in her arms. Across the
narrow street with its water-filled gutters, barefoot children in holey
sweaters or with burlap tied about their shoulders, slapped their feet as
they jigged, or jumped at hop-scotch. Back of them in typical Dublin decay
rose the stables of an anciently prosperous shipping concern; in the v dip
of the roofless walls, spiky grass grew and through the barred windows the
wet gray sky was slotted.
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