Being without stock of her own now she has to go into town that evening to buy provisions for housekeeping. The shop-keepers show her scant courtesy, but she puts up with no neglect and no disrespect. It is almost dark when she has finished her shopping, and then, for a near cut back to Knockaloe, she passes, with her string bag in her hand, through a by-street which has an ale-house at one corner. There she comes upon a tumultuous scene. In front of a small house, with the door standing open, a crowd of women and children have gathered to listen to a wild quarrel that is going on within. There is a man’s voice swearing, a girl’s voice screaming and an old woman’s pleading. “So this is what my maintenance from the army has been spent on--keeping you and your ... German bastard.” “It’s not my fault, Harry; I tried to get another place and nobody would have me.” “Neither will I have you, so get out of this house quick.” “Leave me alone! Leave me alone, I tell you! If you touch my child I’ll scratch your eyes out.” “Out you go, you harlot, and to ... with you.” “Harry! Liza! Harry! Harry! Children!” cries the old woman. Mona asks the women of the crowd what is going on. “Don’t you know, miss? It’s Liza Kinnish, the girl with the German baby. Her brother has come home from the war, and he is turning her out--and no wonder.” A number of men, half-intoxicated, come from the ale-house, but they make no attempt to intervene, and at the next moment a bare-headed soldier, also in drink, with the upper buttons of his tunic torn open, comes from the house, dragging after him a girl with a baby in her arms and her disordered hair streaming on to her shoulders. “Out you go--you and your d---- German offal!” Flinging the girl into the street, the man returns to the house and clashes the door behind him. “Let me in!” screams the girl, hammering at the door with her spare hand. The door opens and the soldier comes to the threshold. “Look here, you ... I’m not going to have the fellows sneering at me when they come home on Monday morning, so if you are not gone to ... out of this inside two minutes....” “Why did _you_ come home?” cries the girl. “You beast! You brute! Why didn’t the Germans kill you?” At that the soldier, foaming at the mouth, is lifting his clenched fist to the girl when Mona, crushing through the crowd of women and throwing down her string bag, lifts her own hand and strikes the man full in the jaw, and he falls like a log. Then, while he squirms on the ground, stunned and winded, she turns on the men from the ale-house, who have previously been drinking with him and taunting him and egging him on. “And you!” she cries. “What _are_ you? Are you _men?_ You white-livered mongrels! Your mothers were _women_, and they’d be ashamed of you.” By this time the soldier has scrambled to his feet and, with blood in his mouth, he is trying to laugh.