"But, oh, Aileen! Jim wouldn't, an' Mr. Googe turned away sad-like, an' then Jim comes home, an' widout a word to his wife, says if they don't strike, because there's a convic' an' a no union man a-workin' 'longside of him in his section, he'll lave an' give up his job here--an' it's two hundred he's paid down out of his wages, an' me a-savin' from morn till night on me home--an' 't was to be me very own because Jim says no man alive can tell when he'll be dead in the quarries an' the sheds." She wept afresh and Billy was left unconsoled, for Maggie, wiping her eyes to look at Aileen and wonder at her silence, saw that she, too, was weeping; but the tears rolled silently one after another down her flushed cheeks. "Och, Aileen, darlin'! Don't ye cry wid me--me burden's heavy enough widout the weight of wan of your tears--say something to comfort me heart about Jim." "I can't, Maggie, I think it's wicked for Jim to say such things to Mr. Googe--everybody knows what he has been through. And it would serve Jim McCann but right," she added hotly, "if the time should come when his Billy should have the same cruel words said to him--" "Don't--don't--for the love of the Mother of God, don't say such things, Aileen!" She caught up the sorely perplexed and troubled Billy, and buried her face in his red curls. "Don't for the sake of the mother I am, an' only a mother can know how the Mother of God himself felt wid her crucified Son an' the bitter words he had to hear--ye're not a mother, Aileen, an' so I won't lay it up too much against ye--" Aileen interrupted her with exceeding bitterness; "No, I'm not a mother, Maggie, and I never shall be." Maggie looked at her in absolute incomprehension. "I thought you was cryin' for me, an' Jim, an' all our prisent troubles, but I belave yer cryin' for--" Mrs. McCann stopped short; she was still staring at Aileen who suddenly lifted her brimming eyes to hers.--What Mrs. McCann read therein she never accurately defined, even to Jim; but, whatever it was, it caused a revulsion of feeling in Maggie's sorely bruised heart. She set Billy down on the floor without any ceremony, much to that little man's surprise, and throwing her arms around Aileen drew her close with a truly maternal caress.