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 woman entered. She was accompanied by a boy, who slouched in behind her, shutting the door at her solicitous command, and halted there, hanging his head. His eyes shifted suspiciously under the hat brim that shadowed his sallow, prematurely wrinkled face; his lips curled in an evil sneer that seemed habitual.

The woman fluttered her shawl about her shoulders, clutched it to her thin breast with one hand, while the other she stretched forth with a blessing, as it were, for Malachi, and as she spoke, her seamed and scarred old Irish face, bleached in the steam of many wash-days and framed in withered black bonnet strings, glowed with the light of mother-love.

"Praise be, Mal'chi Nol'n," she began, in a high voice that immediately stifled the clinking of glasses and the laughter behind the partition. "May God bless ye—ye're th' foinest man in th' whole town! To think of yer l'avin' th' laad out th' way ye did—an' so soon afther me havin' th' impidence to ask ye, too—shure a mither's blessin' an' th' blessin' of th' Vargin'll be on ye fer gettin' th' paardon fer 'im. Shtep up here, Jamesy, and t'ank Misther Nol'n yersilf—he's th' best man—"