The tone of her voice was not encouraging; she

seemed to have spoken to me out of a sense of duty. I looked

humbly at the great jars that stood like eastern guards at either side

of the dark entrance to the stall and murmured:


"No, thank you."


The young lady changed the position of one of the vases and went

back to the two young men. They began to talk of the same

subject. Once or twice the young lady glanced at me over her

shoulder.


I lingered before her stall, though I knew my stay was useless, to

make my interest in her wares seem the more real. Then I turned

away slowly and walked down the middle of the bazaar. I allowed

the two pennies to fall against the sixpence in my pocket. I heard a

voice call from one end of the gallery that the light was out. The

upper part of the hall was now completely dark.


Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and

derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.


EVELINE


SHE sat at the window watching the evening invade the avenue.

Her head was leaned against the window curtains and in her

nostrils was the odour of dusty cretonne. She was tired.


Few people passed. The man out of the last house passed on his

way home; she heard his footsteps clacking along the concrete

pavement and afterwards crunching on the cinder path before the

new red houses. One time there used to be a field there in which

they used to play every evening with other people's children. Then

a man from Belfast bought the field and built houses in it--not

like their little brown houses but bright brick houses with shining

roofs. The children of the avenue used to play together in that field

--the Devines, the Waters, the Dunns, little Keogh the cripple, she

and her brothers and sisters. Ernest, however, never played: he was

too grown up. Her father used often to hunt them in out of the field

with his blackthorn stick; but usually little Keogh used to keep nix

and call out when he saw her father coming. Still they seemed to

have been rather happy then. Her father was not so bad then; and

besides, her mother was alive. That was a long time ago; she and

her brothers and sisters were all grown up her mother was dead.

Tizzie Dunn was dead, too, and the Waters had gone back to

England. Everything changes. Now she was going to go away like

the others, to leave her home.


Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar

objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years,

wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she

would never see again those familiar objects from which she had

never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she

had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing

photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside

the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary

Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he

showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a

casual word:


"He is in Melbourne now."


She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise?

She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway

she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all

her life about her. O course she had to work hard, both in the

house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores

when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she

was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by

advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an

edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.


"Miss Hill, don't you see these ladies are waiting?"


"Look lively, Miss Hill, please."


She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.


But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not

be like that.