“So then, the landing day came, and sister and I were pushed down the gangplank with the others. I remember falling and losing hold of her hand, and getting up and catching at her skirt again. At least I thought it was her skirt. I ran down the wharf as fast as I could, holding on to that dress. Then I remember some one shrieking: ‘It ain’t Jimmy at all! It’s another boy altogether!’ And with that a woman seized me by the arm and shook me till I screamed. ‘Who air you that’s takin’ the place of me Jimmy?’ she asked. “I have forgotten all the other words of that day, but I remember those. The people kept pouring and pouring along, and I think the woman left me to look for her Jimmy. So after a while I found myself in the street with the people and the carts and carriages dashing every way about me. I ran about like a crazy boy, too frightened to ask questions. Finally a man who was going along with a tin pail on his arm, stopped and picked me up. He tried to talk to me, but I was too frantic to listen, and anyway, I was only a baby. He took me to a poor home, a dark place with two rooms or maybe three, and there was a woman there who was good to me. I used to hear the two of them talking and saying that whoever I belonged to couldn’t have cared much for me or they’d have been looking for me. But afterward, I came to believe that they were not very anxious to have my people find me. They were homesick folk with no little ones, and they thought I was one of a great brood and would not be missed. So I lived with them, Azalea, till I was seven years of age.” “Till you were seven!” breathed Azalea, leaning forward a little now. “And then, Keefe?” “And then good Bridget O’Connor, who had, in her way, been a mother to me, died. Mike O’Connor was fond of me, too, but how could he be looking after me, and himself away every day working on the street? Besides, said he to me: ‘You be different from us O’Connors, boy. It would be a shame to tie you down all your life to a man like me. Bridget knew it, God save her, but she wanted the sound of your voice in the house. I’ll put you with the good Sisters, and they’ll find a new fayther and mother for ye.’ So he did. He put me in an orphan asylum, and there I lived for three months, and at the end of that time I was taken by another lonely woman who wanted a child in her house.” “Oh,” breathed Azalea, “was she good to you, Keefe? You were so little—so dreadfully little! Was she good to you?” A slight color had come back to Keefe’s face. His lips were no longer so blue and unnatural as they had been. He put out his hand and caught a little fold of Azalea’s frock between his fingers and held on to it as children hold on to the dresses of the women they depend upon.