"You're a one for roamin' the world, I must say!" she said. "You're no sooner here nor you're away again. Mebbe you'll come up an' see my aunt ... she was talkin' about you only last week ... an' Peter'd be right an' glad to welcome you!" "No, thanks, not to-day," he answered. "I've something to do at home ... I'm sorry!..." "But you said you were comin' to see me!..." "I know, but I've just remembered something ... I'm sorry!" He was speaking in a jerky, agitated manner and he began to move away as if he were afraid that she would detain him. "I'll come another time," he added. "Well, you're the quare man," she said. "Anybody'd think you were afeard of me, the hurry you're in to run away!" He laughed nervously. "Of course, I'm not afraid of you," he exclaimed. "Why should I be?" "I don't know!" She looked at him for a few seconds, and then the whimsical look that he remembered so well came into her eyes. "D'ye mind the way you wanted to marry me, Henry?" she said. "Yes ... yes! Ha, ha!" "An' now I've this! It's a quaren funny, isn't it?" "Funny?" "Aye, the way things go. I wonder what sort of a child I'd a' had if I'd married you!" "I really don't know!... I'm afraid I must go now!" "Well, good-bye, Henry! I'll mebbe see you again some time!" She held out her hand to him and he took it, and then dropped it quickly. "Yes, perhaps," he answered, and added, "Good-bye!" He went off quickly, not looking back until he had reached the foot of the "loanie," and then he stood for a second or two to watch her. She was busy with her baby again. He could see her white breast shining in the sunlight, and her head bent over the sucking child. "Well, I'm damned," he said to himself, as he hurried off. And as he hurried home, his mind set on quitting Ballymartin as speedily as possible, he remembered the casual way in which she had spoken of their possibly meeting again. "I'll mebbe see you some time!" she had said. So indifferent to him as that, she was, so happy in her love for her husband whom he remembered as a great big, hairy, tanned man who beat hot iron with heavy hammers and bent it into wheels and shoes for horses. "She takes more interest in that putty-faced brat of hers than she does in me," he said to himself, angrily, and then, so swift were his changes of mood, he began to laugh. "Of course, she does," he said aloud. "Why shouldn't she? It's hers, isn't it?" He remembered her young beauty and contrasted it with her appearance when he saw her in the "loanie" with her child. In a few years, he thought, she would be like any village woman, worn out, misshapen, tired, with gnarled knuckles and thickened hands. Already she had begun to neglect her hair.... "It's a damned shame," he murmured. "If she'd married me she'd have kept her looks!..." "But she wouldn't marry me," he went on. "I wasn't man enough for her.... My God, I wish I was out of this!" 5 "Father," he said when he got home, "I'd like to go to London at once!"