“I did, sir—but I didn’t rightly know what it was, an’ I half asleep.” She rocked herself to and fro, wretchedly. “Oh, wirra, the great mothor! Is it desthroyed entirely, sir?” “It is not—but it’s the mercy of Heaven we’re not all killed, and you and the little ass, too. When you hear that horn, mother, get to one side of a road quickly: and don’t be afraid to call out, if it happens to be a narrow road.” “I . . . I . . .” She looked at him helplessly, her voice breaking. “Don’t worry—you’re all right,” he said gently. “Is it tired you are?” “I been sittin’ up with my son these two nights,” she said, finding words. “Mortal ill he was, an’ the woman he married no more use than a yalla-haired doll. An’ when they’re sick they do be wantin’ their mothers again, like as if they’d gone back to be little boys.” Just for a moment he caught a gleam of triumph in her dulled eyes. “And is he better?” “He is, sir, God be praised, and I’m gettin’ home to me man; there’s no knowin’ what he’ll have done to himself, not used to bein’ alone and all.” Something passed from O’Neill’s palm into the trembling, work-worn old hand. “That’s to bring you luck for your son,” he said, forestalling her protests. “Let you get home, mother, and have a meal. Wait a moment.” He unscrewed the cap of his flask, and made her drink out of the silver cup, to her own great horror. “If I’d a tin, itself!” she protested. “But your honour’s cup!” “Drink it up,” said O’Neill, unmoved. He took back the cup and stood aside; and the little ass moved on, the old woman calling down blessings upon him, with tears finding well-accustomed furrows down her cheeks. “Sitting up two nights, and probably doing the work of the house during the day, in addition to nursing; and most likely on bread and stewed black tea!” said O’Neill, indignantly, striding back to the motor. “You wouldn’t wonder if she went to sleep in front of the car of Juggernaut. Poor old soul! I say, you people have been busy!” They had levered the heavy car back, chocking the wheels with great stones, and the chauffeur was making explorations into her vital parts. Sir John joined him, and they discoursed unintelligibly in technical language. “Well, it might be worse, but it’s not too good,” Sir John said, at last, emerging from the investigation and wiping his hands on a ball of cotton-waste. “There’s no moving her without men and horses, and no getting her going again until we get some spare parts; and they’re no nearer than Belfast or Dublin; possibly we shall have to telegraph to London for them.” “But she’s not desthroyed entirely?” Norah said, happily. “She is not. Hadn’t we the luck of the world that it happened where it did, just on level ground and where there was a little room to manœuvre! If it had been three minutes earlier, on the side of the hill, in the narrow cutting, we should simply have gone clean over the poor old soul and her ass. Nothing could have saved them.”