When morning came Norah Ryan was conscious of a dull sickly pain behind her left shoulder-blade. The child slept badly during the night and coughed feebly when it awoke. There were no matches to light the fire; a half-loaf, a pennyworth of tea and a quarter hundred-weight of coal was all that remained in the room.
Norah went into Meg’s compartment. The door was lying open. The woman sat by a dead fire, having just awakened from a drunken sleep on the floor. She was a kind-hearted soul, generous and sympathetic, but fond of drink. A glass of whisky made her very tipsy, two glasses made her very irritable.
“Ye’re up early, lass,” said the old woman, rising to her feet and scratching her head vigorously. “Is Sheila sleepin’ yet?”
“Dead!” exclaimed old Meg, sitting down on the only chair in the room and raising both hands, palms outwards, to a level with her face.
“A tram struck her last night when she was comin’ home,” said Norah. “Killed at once, the policeman said that she was.”
Meg wept loudly for a few moments, then: “What are ye goin’ to do now?” she asked, drying her eyes.
“There’s often a chance goin’ in the rag-store where I work and it’s not a hard job at all,” said the old woman. “The job may be a wee bit dirty and clorty, but think it over. Six shillin’s a week is the pay to start wi’, then it rises to eight.”
“Thanks for the help that ye are to me,” said Norah; “and when d’ye think that I’ll get the job?”
“Maybe at any time now, for there’s one of the young ones goin’ to get marrit a fortnight come to-morrow,” said the old woman. “Then there’s a woman that lives at No. 27 of this street, Helen McKay is her name; ‘Tuppenny Helen,’ the ones on the stairhead ca’ her. She takes care of children for twopence a day.”
“I’m not goin’ to leave my child,” cried Norah. She spoke fiercely, angrily. “D’ye think that I would give up my child to a woman like Tuppenny Helen? God sees that I can keep my own child whatever happens to me!”
“Whatever ye say it’s not for me to say the word agen it,” said Meg, surprised at Norah’s wrath.
“Could I take the boy with me if I get a job?”
“Nae fear; nae fear of that,” said the old woman. “It would smother a child in a week in yon place. Dust flyin’ all over the place; dirty rags with creepin’ things and crawlin’ things and maybe diseases on them; it’s a foulsome den. But folks maun eat and folks maun earn siller, and that’s why some hae to wark in a place like a rag-store. But dinna take the child wi’ ye there. For one thing ye winna be allowed and for another the feelthy place would kill the dear little thing in less than a week.”