“Sure, Gypo,” she said in a loud, hilarious voice, “ye can sleep here till the crack o’ doom if ye like. Sure enough, Connemara Maggie tole me about Bartly Mulholland comin’ lookin’ for ye. She came into Biddy Burke’s as drunk as a lord, an’ she outs with a yarn about Bartly puttin’ a gun to ye’ head an’ drivin’ ye up the street in front o’ him.” “Yer a liar, she didn’t,” growled Gypo, starting slightly. “Maybe she didn’t say that exactly,” continued Katie, “but——” “Did she give ye a quid I gave her to give ye?” “A quid? Did ye give her a quid for me? Well, of all the liars! Well, of all the robbers! Of all the dirty sons of pock-faced tailors! She takes the cooked biscuit. Troth then, she only gev me ten bob an’ I had to fight her for that. O’ course I’m sayin’ nothin’ about things I might say a lot about, but——” “Oh! less o’ yer gab,” growled Gypo, feeling behind him on the floor with his hand. “I’m not in humour for yer gab, Katie.” “Don’t lie on the floor,” she cried solicitously. “Get into the bed. Lie in my corner. Don’t mind, Louisa. The corner is mine. I can let who I like int’ it. Louisa, if ye don’t lie still I’ll lave ye for dead as sure as Our Lord was crucified. So I will. Well what could ye expect? An’ I’m sayin’ nothin’ now, Gypo, seein’ the position yer in, but it’s the price o’ ye all the same. I hope ye don’t mind me speakin’ me mind out. It’s the price o’ ye for lavin’ them that were kind to ye, an’ throwin’ yer money away on a strap like that. But sure me poor mother used to say, Lord have mercy on her——” “Get outa here, get outa here,” screamed the old woman, waving her stick. Gypo had thrown himself on the bed on his back. The old lady began to beat him feebly about the body with her stick. He took no notice of her. He fumbled with the heap of tattered blankets, arranging them about his legs. Katie Fox caught up the tongs and approached the bed sideways, making furtive signs to the old woman, urging her secretly to keep quiet. The old woman subsided, muttering something. Katie went back to the fire and put down the tongs. She continued to talk. She was rapidly becoming more excited. Her eyes had now a look of insanity in them. Her lips were constantly becoming wreathed with smiles, after the manner of a lunatic who is thinking of some demoniac buffoonery in his muddled brain. “Though few people know it,” she cried arrogantly, looking at the door, while she put a cigarette in her mouth, “me poor mother was a born lady. Put that in yer pipe, Louisa Cummins, and try an’ smoke it. Yev given me dog’s abuse since I came into yer rotten pigsty of a room, but still an’ all ye know yer not fit to wipe me shoes. So I don’t give a damn.” “Yerra, d’ye hear her, d’ye hear her?” croaked Louisa Cummins. She began to laugh, making a noise in her throat like a hen, that quaint, cunning, querulous sound, that a hen makes at night, when disturbed during her roosting hours.