Some distance behind her came a smaller woman, as shrunken, as withered, and as yellow as an old leaf. Even her shoes seemed to have dried and shriveled, curling up at the toes. And she fluttered along in the light morning breeze, holding back against it, on her heels, with an odd effect of being carried forward faster than she wished to go. She was Mrs. Byrne, from the floor below Mrs. Cregan's flat, and she had been starting out on a secret errand of her own when she heard the quarrel overhead and stopped to hear the end of it. There was something guilty in her manner, and she was evidently struggling between her desire to reach the next street unseen by Mrs. Cregan and her desire to know what had happened in the Cregan flat. Her curiosity proved the stronger. She let the wind blow her alongside her friend's portly despair. She said, in the hoarse whisper that was all she had left of her voice: "Is it yerself, Missus Cregan? Yuh're off to choorch early this mornin'." Mrs. Cregan looked around, blinking to clear her eyes. "Choorch?" she said, on the plaintiveness of a high note that broke in her throat. "Yuh're cryin', woman!". Her look of craftiness had changed at once to one of startled distress. "Come back out o' this with yuh." She caught Mrs. Cregan's arm. "It's no thing to be doin' on the street! Come back, now. Where're yuh goin'?" Mrs. Cregan marched stolidly ahead and carried her neighbor with her. "I've quit 'm." "Quit who?" "Himsilf.... Dinny." Mrs. Byrne expressed her emotion and showed her tact by silently compressing her lips. "I've quit 'im, fer good an' all." She stroked a tear down her cheek with a thick forefinger. "I'll niver go back. Niver!" "Come away with yuh, Mary Cregan," Mrs. Byrne cried, in her breathy huskiness. "At _your_ age! Faith, yuh're as flighty as one o' them girls with the pink silk petticoats. He's yer husban', ain't he? D'yuh think yuh were married over the broomstick? Come an' behave yerself like a decent woman. What'd Father Dumphy say to _this_, think yuh?" "He's a man. I know what he'd say. He'd tell me to go back to Cregan. I'll niver go back. Niver!" "Yuh won't! What'll yuh do, then? Where'll yuh go to?" "I'll niver go back. Niver! He's broke me best chiny--an' kicked the leg off the chair--an' overtoorned the table--an' ordered me out o' the little bit o' home I been all these years puttin' together. The teapot th' ol' man brought from Ireland--the very teapot--smashed to smithereens! An' the little white dishes with the gilt trimmin's I had to me weddin' day, Mrs. Byrne! There was the poor things all broke to bits!" She stopped to point at the sidewalk, as if the wreckage lay there before her. "All me little bit o' chiny. All of it. All of it, Mrs. Byrne. Ev'ry bit! Boorsted!"