The Quality of Mercy

MRS. O’BEIRNE, veiling her blue, Irish eyes beneath her dark lashes, and nervously adjusting the back of her belt, made her way up to the top of the room and waited in suitable embarrassment for the customary applause to subside. At her elbow the wicked club secretary whispered, ‘ If you’ve forgot your speech, I’ve it copied down twice’t over in the minutes already, from last year and the year before that.’

The blue eyes flashed a smile. ‘Just for your impudence, Mary Flanagan, watch me now while I shock you with a bran new one,’ murmured Mrs. O’Beirne; and then the clapping came to an end and she raised her eyes, with the laugh still in them, and spoke out. She had a proud little lift to her head, had Mrs. O’Beirne.

' Mrs. President, and the other ladies of the Mothers’ Club, this is three times now that you’ve given me the honor of thanking you for electing me to be the treasurer of the Mothers’ Club, and I don’t, know how to say nothing different this time from what I said the first time, and that is, Thank you! I’m just as grateful as ever I was, for this great honor you have devolved upon me, but my words is just as scarce. And one thing which I did not expect, and that was to have the vote unanimous and standing up. I was not looking for it at all.’

There was a light volley of appreciative applause. The secretary, busily scribbling, whispered, ‘Go slow!’

‘And now,’ continued the treasurer, ' there is more ways of saying thank you than words, and I wish I could say it in figures, too. I’d like to be able to say I was going to keep the accounts for the club better this year than I ever kept them before. But that’s one thing about accounts, that if they are kept square they can’t be kept squarer.’

‘And you sure do keep ’em square,’ cried an adulatory voice.

‘So the only thing I can think of for to show you how much obliged I am to you ’ — here the speaker paused and surveyed quizzically the rows of American-Irish, middle-aged countenances — ‘is to tell you a way I’ve thought of to get rid of the surplus in the treasury, and something over besides.’

There was an uproarious shout of laughter from the club, and Mrs. O’Beirne’s wide mouth twitched sympathetically. Then, she straightened her shoulders, pressed her elbows against the sides of her waist, interlocked her fingers, and became suddenly and commandingly serious.

At once the audience settled into attention.

‘Ladies of the Mothers’ Club, it is time we done something as a club to show our gratitude to Miss Marshall and the Settlement for all they do for us.’

A smile of inspiration and enthusiasm dawned in the eyes of the mothers. Mrs. O’Beirne’s voice softened to a reminiscent tone.

‘It’s ten years this spring that Miss Marshall come to me. It was the day after I buried my Jimmie, and I was sortin’ over his little clothes and foldin’ them away. And Miss Marshall, she had come to call, the way she always does when there’s anybody in the neighborhood needs a friend. And she says to me, “Mrs. O’Beirne,” she says, “I want you to help me to start a Mothers’ Club.” — She never fails to say the comforting word, does Miss Marshall. And me that had n’t any children! God bless her!’

The secretary and two or three other women wiped their eyes.

‘So that was the way it begun,’ resumed Mrs. O’Beirne, in firmer tones. ‘There was twenty of us the first meeting, and I was the youngest of the lot, which I am to-day if it was n’t for Mary Flanagan, but she’s an old maid and don’t count.’

The wet-eyed mothers laughed, and Mary Flanagan blew her nose and ejaculated, ‘Get along with you!’

‘Miss Marshall was president them years, till she’d learned us parliamentary rules and got so busy with the Settlement growing on her hands. And old Mrs. Brady, God rest her soul, was treasurer, and the dues was ten cents a month. To-day the membership’s doubled, and the dues, and we belong to the Federation. We’ve got eightyfive dollars in the treasury this minute from the Fancy sale, and at the end of this meetin’ when the members what owes has paid up their back dues, we’ll have fifteen dollars more. And yesterday, when I was fitting Miss Marshall for her shirt-waists, she says to me, real mournful-like, “Oh, Mrs. O’Beirne, whatever are we goin’ to do with the work?” she says. “So many things to do and so little money to do with, and all these new people comin’ into the neighborhood that we’d ought to get hold of. Have you noticed how many Greeks there is comin’ in?” she says. “And have I,” says I, “the dirty, peddlin’ thieves!” I says. And Miss Marshall laughed at me, and she says, “Oh, Mrs. O’Beirne, and is that all of the Settlement spirit you’ve got off me all these years, — and you and me such friends?” And then she stood there thinkin’. And my head was that bowed with shame, did n’t I cut the left shoulder of her shirt-waist all crooked, and spoiled the whole half of the front for her. But she has the heavenly disposition, Miss Marshall has.’

Here Mrs. O’Beirne looked at the secretary with an expression at once rueful and amused.

‘That last about the shirt-waist don’t belong to the speech, Mary Flanagan,’ she remarked, ‘so you need n’t to be takin’ it down. What I want to say is, there’s a large empty room on the first floor of Number 60, and there’s some one agreed to pay the rent, but it’s the money for the furnishing that Miss Marshal has n’t got.’

Mrs. O’Beirne paused.

‘And what would the room be for?’ asked a round-faced mother.

‘Why, for the Greeks! Who else would it be for?’

‘The Greeks! ’ muttered half a dozen voices; and gloom crept into the upturned eyes of the club.

Mrs. O’Beirne observed this shadow of opposition calmly.

‘Well, what have you got against the Greeks?’ she asked.

‘ They ’re foreigners,’ croaked a stout, red-faced woman.

‘There’s Mrs. Grady, sittin’ next to you, Mrs. MacAlarney, she’s a foreigner. She was born in the Old Country, and so was Mrs. Halloran, three seats behind, and Mrs. Mahoney; and they’re proud of it, and so are we.’

Some of the mothers laughed, others looked perplexed.

‘There’s a difference in foreigners,’ asserted a wiry little woman. ‘Them Greeks don’t talk English.’

‘If you’ll just look inside a grammar, Mrs. Barlow, you ’ll find that you and me don’t talk English neither.’

More members laughed; butagaunt, black-eyed woman rose and cried out angrily, ‘What’s the use of us trying to out-talk you, Mrs. O’Beirne,— but you know what we mean. They ’re a low, dirty lot. They ain’t civilized, and I don’t want nothing to do with them. I told my Josie if ever I caught her playin’ in the street with them I’d break her neck.’

A number of the mothers, mortified by the vehemence of the speaker, lowered their eyes and moved uneasily in their chairs; but several nodded in violent accord.

‘I’ll hold with Mrs. Casey,’ said one of these. ‘Some people is lower than others, — the Chinese is about the lowest, but the Greeks is pretty low.’

‘If there’s any ladies here have been cornin’ to Miss Marshall’s Travel Class,’ interrupted Mrs. O’Beirne, ‘they’ll stand by me when I say that that’s a mistake. The Greeks was artists and play-writers and poets; they were a civil-i-zation before you and me and America was thought of. I don’t want to out-talk nobody. I’m not saying I’d choose Greeks, nor Roosians, nor Italians, for neighbors, if I had my way. But they’re here. Ladies of the Mothers’ Club, this is our chance for a share in this great work that’s been going on in our midst for ten years. Where would the Mothers’ Chib be, I ’ll ask you, if it did n’t have this room ? There could n’t no forty-five ladies squeeze into my tenement, that’s sure! Nor into Mary Flanagan’s, nor President Murphy’s. And now, why can’t we pass it on, and give the new people a chance?’

Contrite submissiveness emanated from the majority of the mothers, but a defiant voice at the back of the room demanded, —

‘Did Miss Marshall ask you to ask the club for the money?’

‘Shame! Shame!’ murmured two or three mothers.

Mrs. O’Beirne fixed the speaker with a shocked, reproachful eye.

‘ She did not, Mrs. Morrison. I thank God I have two or three ideas of my own.’

Then her voice deepened to pleading: ‘Ah, it is n’t me that ought to be putting it into your heads to give this money. It’s you that had ought to think of it for yourselves, — you that have children that ’ll live to bless this house. Nor we ain’t the only mothers, nor ours ain’t the only children. I have more time to think of the mothers’ children than you have. You’re right, they’re ignorant foreigners; but if we don’t try to make Americans out of them, then we’re no better than foreigners ourselves, I say — and goodbye, America!’

Her adherents, now the greater part of the audience, applauded vigorously.

‘There’ll be one hundred dollars in the treasury,’ she reiterated. ‘What will we do with it?’

The wiry little woman bounced to her feet. ‘I’ll move that we give it to Miss Marshall to buy furniture.’

‘ I second the motion,’ said Mrs. Morrison, haughty but contrite.

‘I knew you would,’ Mrs. O’Beirne called out. ’I ’m coming back there in a minute to kiss and make up.’

And in a few moments it had been arranged that the money should be presented to Miss Marshall, by the treasurer, at the next meeting.

Mrs. Morrison, Mary Flanagan, and two or three other women who lived near Mrs. O’Beirne, walked with her down the street, craning their necks and jostling one another to watch her as she talked. The naive and innocent pleasure which she took in her own personality and achievement expressed itself in her buoyant step, the brilliancy of her eyes, the happy excitement in her voice.

‘She kind of chokes me when I look at her,’ whispered one of the women. ‘My heart beats like as if I’d been runnin’.’

‘She’s a grand woman!’ declared Mary Flanagan, in a low, emphatic voice.

’I should think you’d be afraid to keep all that money by you, Mrs. O’Beirne,’ Mrs. Morrison was saying. ‘If it was me I’d be that uneasy I could n’t sleep nights.’

‘Oh, I’ve had more than this to one time,’ said the treasurer carelessly. ‘O’Beirne keeps a bit of something for a rainy day in a tin box, and there’s a lock to it. Nobody would touch it but him, —and I’ll bank on O’Beirne.'

‘ You ’re the fortunate woman to have such a good man!’ said Mrs. Morrison; adding hastily, ‘Not that I’m sayin’ anything against Morrison. I’d not ask a bigger heart than his; but it’s just not in him to save.'

There was a brief, embarrassed silence, for Mr. Morrison’s faults and virtues were well known to his neighbors.

‘Will you look at the crowd by your door, Mrs. O ’Beirne! ’ cried Mary Flanagan, to change the subject. ‘Is there anybody sick, do you know?'

‘ Mrs. Dugan’s Mamie was took to the hospital for her hip disease last week,’ said Mrs. O’Beirne. ‘ Here comes Johnnie Dugan’ll tell us.’

And Johnnie did.

‘Oh, Mrs. O’Beirne,’ he shouted, ‘Mr. O’Beirne’s sick, and they had to carry him upstairs.’

Mrs. O’Beirne’s eyes widened; she began to run. The other women followed, but as she reached her door she turned and said, ‘Good-bye,’ and they knew themselves dismissed.

‘ What do you say? ’ questioned Mary Flanagan. ‘He would n’t be —?’

‘Oh, not Barney O’Beirne,’ declared Mrs. Morrison. ‘ He never takes a drop. What I was thinkin’ was one of them heavy trunks might have fell on him, or he might have strained hisself. They’re cruel careless the way they sling the baggage about.'

‘ His face was a kind of blue color, like them California plums,’ volunteered a little girl.

The women stared, horrified, and moved slowly away.

Upstairs Mrs. O’Beirnc was kneeling beside the bed. An embarrassed fellow workman of Mr. O’Beirne’s laid a little bottle on the pillow and tiptoed out of the room.

Mrs. O’Beirne stared at the label, amyl nitrate. The strange name filled her with dismay.

‘ How long have you been taking this, Barney?’ she asked, reaching for the bottle.

‘Oh, not so long.’

‘ What are they for, — your stummick? You never told me.’

‘No, — not my stummick.’

She sat down on the bed and stroked his hand.

‘ What’s it you’ve been keepin’ from me?’

‘I thought I done it for the best,’ he pleaded. ‘I did n’t believe the doctor knew; and what was the use of you bein’ frightened for nothin’?’

‘I know, — I know,’ she whispered. ‘You never done nothin’ that you did n’t mean it kind, Barney, — never. But oh, my dear!’

She kissed him on the forehead.

‘It must be your lungs then, that makes you breathe so short?’ she observed presently.

‘No, — my heart.’

‘When did you go to see the doctor?’

He lay looking toward the window for a few moments; then, without moving his eyes, he began to speak in a slow, careful voice.

‘I been gettin’ tireder and tireder the last year, but I thought it was no more than natural; everybody that works faithful gets tired. And then one day I had a funny spell. It was the end of last summer, and I thought it was the heat. But in October come another, — time of one of them conventions when there was an extra rush of baggage, — and then I begun to be a little worried.’

‘Did n’t you feel no pains?’

‘Oh, yes, — off and on! But they might’ve been rheumatism.’

His wife sighed, and a deprecatory note crept into his voice.

‘ I did go to a doctor after that, Nora. I been to more than half a dozen. The first was to the Dispensary; and I never took much stock in things I did n’t pay for. He was a young feller, and there was a lot of women and children waitin’ their turn.’

The sick man was silent a few minutes, breathing painfully, but presently began again in the same slow voice: ‘I did n’t think he knew what he was talkin’ about, — but I thought it might be safer to get my life insured. But the Insurance Company would n’t take me. Their doctor was a fat old party, —shorter-breathed than me, — and he says, “ I could n’t conscientiously recommend you, — not with that heart.” And then I got mad and told him I always knew insurance was a fake, and the papers was full of their rascality anyway.’

Mrs. O’Beirne gave a little choking laugh, and leaned down and kissed her husband.

‘He laughed at me, too; and he says, “Here, if you don’t believe me, go to this man, — he makes a specialty of your complaint.” And he wrote the name on a card. And that third feller was a hummer. Sure I thought I was to confession. He begun with me before I was born, — and wrote it all down in a book. He listened behind my back, — and he used instruments on me, — and he took the height and the weight and the width of me, and measured me acrost my chest and under my arms, — till I asked him if there was a suit of clothes thrown in with the treatment.’

Mrs. O’Beirne gave another little laugh, and a little sob. ‘Oh, Barney, Barney darlin’, don’t you, don’t you, when my heart is breakin’! ’

His great hand tightened on hers, and when he spoke again the whimsical, playful note was gone from his weary voice.

‘When he told me I was a sick man, I stood out against him. I says, “ What are you givin’ me? ” I says. “ Look at the healthy color of me, and I’m the biggest man in the baggageroom. If there’s an extra size trunk to handle, they’ll always turn it over to me.” And he says to me, “That ’s what’s the matter with you, — you’re too big,” he says. “Your heart has to work too hard to keep up with you, and then you go and lift trunks. I wonder it did n’t happen five years ago. And your color is not healthy,” he says. “Then am I to give up slingin’ baggage?” I asked him. “Will that cure me?” — He was a good man, that doctor. He looked me square in the eye and held out his hand and gripped mine, and he says, “There is no cure, Mr. O’Beirne.”’

His wife flung up her arms with a cry, and began to pace the room, wringing her hands together. The sick man’s eyes followed her, his breast heaving rapidly. ‘ Maybe you better give me them drops,’ he said. ‘This spell don’t stop off.’

She uncorked the bottle and turned out some of its contents into the palm of her hand.

‘Why,’ she exclaimed, ‘they’re beads! You never are eatin’ glass beads, Barney? They’re deadly!’

‘No, — you hold it under my nose. — Break it!’

She watched him inhale the contents of the capsule through its little silk top, and her awe and her trouble increased.

‘Tell me the doctor’s name, Barney. I’m goin’ to send for him.’

‘Oh, I ain’t been near that one since. This is his medicine, but where was the use of goin’ again? A man’s wife, to the baggage-room, had been cured of something by a Christian Scientist, a woman doctor, so I thought I’d take a chance with her. She give me absent treatment, but one night I had a spell right here in bed, — and I was scared for fear you’d wake. So I told her she need n’t try it on me any more. Then I see a mesmerist’s sign in a window. There did n’t seem to be no harm in having a try at all them things, if it was hopeless, you know. The last one was an osteopath.’ He glanced at his wife almost timidly and added, lowering his eyes, ‘Him and the Christian Scientist was the most expensive of all.’

Mrs. O’Beirne was sitting on the bed, her face buried in her hands. ‘Oh, what would the expense matter if only you was cured!’ she cried.

‘That was the way I thought,’ he answered in a tone of relief. But the anxiety had crept back again with his next words: ‘That was the way I thought, — but now — there’s nothin’ left to bury me.’

Mrs. O’Beirne’s hands came down slowly from her tear-stained face. ‘You mean, — it’s took all the savings?’

‘ I done the best I could! I done the best I could!’ he gasped, stretching his hands out toward her, along the coverlet.

‘Oh, my dear, don’t I know that?’ she whispered, putting her arms about him. ‘ But there was almost enough to bury both of us!’

‘There was the drops,’ he explained. ‘And the Scientist give me four treatments, — and the osteopath — ’

‘Never you mind, darlin’,’ pleaded his wife. ‘It was your money, you’d a right to do what you done.’

‘The regular heart doctor did n’t want to take nothing, but I told him I was n’t livin’ off of charity. I knew how proud you was, Nora!’

‘Yes, darlin’, you done just right.’

‘What’ll we do about the buryin’?’ he whispered. ‘What’ll we do? that’s the thought that’s stayed with me day and night, day and night, since a week ago yesterday, when I took out the last dollar bill, — and they’ve kept a-comin’ more frequent.’

‘You ’re not goin’ to die! You’re not goin’ to die!’ she cried.

‘It don’t seem true that I’m to be buried on charity,’ he said gloomily. ‘Me that never left off workin’ a single day.’

‘If only you had, Barney! Oh, if only you had! I’d ’ve worked my fingers to the bone to keep you!’

‘I think I see myself, layin’ down on you,’ he answered with a faint attempt at scorn; and after a little while, wistfully, ‘Couldn’t you think of some way we could get the money, Nora, — you was always that clever?’

‘Maybe I will, dearie!’ she comforted him.

‘To think that at the last I’d be a disgrace to you, Nora,’ he brooded, — ‘and all the neighbors thinkin’ us so well off! — Me that never drunk a drop, — nor owed a cent. — To think we’d be caught this way. — You could n’t pawn the furniture, — everybody’d know.—It ain’t been out of my mind an hour these eight days. — “Poor Nora!” I says to myself,— “come to this!”’

‘For the love of Mary, Barney, hush!’ moaned Mrs. O’Beirne. ‘Hush, darlin’, — till I think!’

The twilight came, and the darkness. Nora lit the lamp and set it in a corner of the room.

’I’m goin’ for that doctor on the avenue,’ she said, after she had given him a second capsule. ‘I can’t see that these things helps.’

‘Maybe the undertaker would trust you, Nora. Was n’t you telling me that book-keeper in Haley’s Fish Market is goin’ to be married? Maybe you could get her place. You’ll put by fast when you’ve only yourself.’

Her answer was a cry of agony.

‘No, — I don’t believe he would trust you, though,’ continued her husband hopelessly. ‘I mind how hard he was when Morrison’s baby died. I helped Morrison, — but it don’t cost much for a baby,’

‘I’m goin’ out just for a minute, Barney.’

But the sick man was absorbed in his own thoughts; the faint gasping voice went on: ‘What’ll we do if there ain’t carriages enough for the Mothers’ Club, Nora? If it was men they might pay for their own seats. That’s what I been thinking, — them women. We’d always said we’d pay for the Club’s carriages. She’ll be disgraced before all them women, — my Nora, that’s cleverer than all the whole lot of them put together.’

Mrs. O’Beirne hurried out of the room and shut the door. In the hallway she met Mrs. Dugan and the other neighbors, hovering at the top of the staircase. One of them went for the doctor, another for the priest.

‘He may last an hour or two, he may go any minute,’ the doctor said.

The priest performed his offices with perfunctory simplicity, and hurried away to another bedside. Mrs. O’Beirne locked the door against her kindly, inquisitive friends, and bent over her husband’s bed. His eyes sought hers, appealingly, helplessly. His voice was gone, but the lips moved. ‘The buryin’?’ they said.

The tears were streaming down her cheeks. She lifted his great rough hands and pressed them against her quivering lips.

‘I’m going to undress me now, darlin’— and then I’ll come and set by you.’

She took off her belt, unhooked her skirt, and unbuttoned her flannel shirtwaist. Something fell on the floor with a thud. It was the purse containing the club-money.

Mrs. O’Beirne looked down at it. Then she stooped and picked it up slowly, and stood looking at it. Quite silently she stood, a tensely thinking look on her face; then, on a sudden, she gave a loud, joyful cry and ran to the bed.

‘ Barney, Barney! — I ’ve found a way, darlin’—it’s all right, darlin’! You need n’t to worry no more!’

A faint echo of her own cry burst from Barney’s lips; his eyes gave one flash of love and joy; then a dreadful spasm shook him, his hands clutched his throat, — and he died.

There were carriages enough for the Mothers’ Club.

Mary Flanagan rode with the widow and got out at the widow’s door.

‘It’s been a beautiful funeral, my dear,’ she said. ‘All the members is talking about your lovely taste in the casket, so severe and quiet.’

She kissed Mrs. O’Beirne and continued anxiously, ‘You’ll be coming to the meeting this week? Some of them was afraid you would n’t want to make the presentation speech, being in mourning. But it’s not like it was a party; philanthropy’s different. If you don’t do it the President’ll have to, — and — she’s a good woman, is Mrs. Murphy — an awful kind woman — but you come and make the speech, dearie! You look just sweet in black!’

‘This week! ’ said Mrs. O’Beirne, and there was a strange, awakened, startled look in her eyes.

‘They’re afraid Miss Marshall will get it from somewhere else if they don’t give it quick. They’re so pleased with themselves about giving the money now, you’d think it was them as thought of it in the first place.’

‘ This week! ’ repeated Mrs. O’Beirne.

‘It’s four days yet. It’ll take your mind off your grief, dear. You will, won’t you ?'

“Oh, I don’t know, — I don’t know!’ said Mrs. O’Beirne wildly, and ran into the house.

‘She will, all right!’ observed Mary Flanagan. ‘She would n’t never let nobody else make that speech.’

And Mrs. O’Beirne was standing in the middle of the tenement kitchen, saying over and over, ‘Oh, my God! what’ll I do?’

A half hour she stood, with her new widow’s bonnet and veil still on her head, saying those words at intervals and staring before her with terrorfilled eyes. But at last her knees began to tremble and she staggered to a chair.

‘It looks so different!' she said in a low voice. ‘ O God! How can I tell them women? I can’t! — I can’t!’ She got up and paced the floor of the kitchen. ‘ O God! Whatever will I do!'

Two days after the funeral, Mrs. Dugan came to the Settlement and asked for Miss Marshall.

‘I’ve come for you to see Mrs. O’Beirne, ’she explained. ‘ It’s my opinion she’s going crazy with grief. Two nights now she’s walked the floor over my head; and she won’t let nobody inside the door; she’ll open it a crack and just stand there, looking at you wild-like, and before you know it she’ll lock it against you. But this morning I calls to her if she would n’t like to have you come, and at first she did n’t say nothing, and then she says, “ Yes!" like it was a cork burst out of a bottle. So I did n’t stop but to throw on my shawl.’

The new lines in Mrs. O’Beirne’s haggard face indicated an experience more tragic than grief.

‘You are in trouble!’ exclaimed Miss Marshall, taking both her hands.

‘I am that, — I am that!’ answered Mrs. O’Beirne. She drew away her hands and covered her face. ‘Terrible trouble!’

Miss Marshall guided her to a chair by the kitchen table, and drew up another chair for herself.

‘There’s nobody but you can help me! ’ moaned the poor woman, her face still buried in her hands, her elbows on the table. ‘And you’ll never have no more use for me when I tell you.'

‘I can’t think of anything you could do that could keep us from being friends,’ said Miss Marshall.

Mrs. O’Beirne lifted her face, clasped her hands tight together, and began to speak rapidly, her voice rising higher and higher.

‘It was along of Barney being sick and spending all his savings on the doctors; and there was nothing left for the funeral, and he never told me till the night he died. And him laying there on his dying bed, gasping for breath. “ To think that at the last I’d be a disgrace to you, Nora,” he says, “me that never drunk a drop! Could n’t you think of some way we could get the money?” he says. Oh, it would have broke your heart to hear him! And the Mothers’ Club purse fell out of my dress, and it was like a miracle. And now I’ve got to give back that money day after to-morrow, — do you hear me? — day after to-morrow!’ Her voice rose to a scream at the last words. She clasped her hands over her mouth and looked at Miss Marshall with fierce, impelling eyes.

‘You mean,’ said Miss Marshall slowly, ‘that you took the money of the Mothers’ Club?’

‘I mean I borrowed it!’ cried Mrs. O’Beirne. ‘There it was in my hand! It was like it was give to me to use. And he died happy, Barney did. Oh, it was worth it!’

‘No!’ said Miss Marshall.

‘And why was n’t it?’ demanded Mrs. O’Beirne; but her eyes fell. ‘ Nothing seemed to matter but that Barney and me should n’t be disgraced by a charity burial,’ she sobbed. ‘How can you know the way we feel about these things? And we’ve always held our heads so high in the neighborhood. Oh, you could n’t understand what it meant!’

‘But you say you borrowed the money, — you must have thought the club would be willing to lend it. Why did n’t you tell them you wanted it?’

‘And have all them women know?’ the widow cried.

An embarrassed silence fell.

‘How much was it?’

‘One hundred dollars.’

An exclamation of surprise escaped Miss Marshall.

‘You could n’t get up a decent funeral for less,’ declared Mrs. O’Beirne, — ‘not with all them carriages.’

‘And why must you hand it in day after to-morrow?’

‘Because they’re a set of fools over a plan, and it was me that put it into their heads; and that was one reason I did n’t mind using the money. They’d never have thought of that other way of using it without I had n’t persuaded them. It seemed more mine than theirs, all the time, that money. Have n’t I had the handling of it three years? And whenever we’d spend any, it was me that said how we’d spend it. I tell you there did n’t seem nothing wrong at all about me using it — then.’

‘But there does now?’

Mrs. O’Beirne turned away her face, and sat motionless. When she spoke, her voice was harsh. ‘You think I’m a thief. But I borrowed that money.'

Again there was silence. Mrs. O’Beirne still sat with her face turned away.

‘If you had been me, and Barney there dying, and nothing before him but pauper burial; if you had held your head high all your life, and never had nothing to do with charity, and respected the way Barney and me was,

— maybe you would n’t have known the difference between borrowing and

— and — just for a minute.’

‘That’s what I’ve been thinking,’

acknowledged Miss Marshall humbly. She put her arms about Mrs. O’Beirne, and the poor woman began to shake and sob.

‘I would n’t have taken it without I meant to pay it back. You know I would n’t. It was only that everything seemed so easy to do when I held the money in my hand.’

‘Why don’t you go to confession? suggested Miss Marshall.

‘It’s not my day till Saturday week, and there’s no good going before, Father Finney would n’t give me the money. It’s the money I’ve got to have, don’t you see? Oh, Miss Marshall, you would n’t leave me be disgraced before all them women? Oh, God, I’ll die first!’

Miss Marshall thought of other cases of the misappropriation of funds, just then agitating the public mind. But she remembered why this woman had taken the money. Miss Marshall was trying very hard to keep her moral outlook clear. Pride, and not contrition, moved Mrs. O’Beirne to tears. Any one who betrayed a public trust should make public reparation. Nothing could be worse for the character of a sinner than to excuse or condone or cover up his sin, on any grounds. ‘But if I fail her now, will that be any more likely to quicken her to repentance? If she were my own sister after the flesh, I should never let her be disgraced before those other women.

Aloud she said, ’I’m not sure that I can get so much money so quickly. You know I’ve only a salary, mysell. I’ll do my best, but there’s very little time.’

They stood up. In Mrs. O’Beirne’s face there was fear instead of relief. ‘But you won’t never think the same of me again,’ she said with strange quiet.

‘If I had had your temptation, I might have done just as you did,’ Miss Marshall answered soothingly.

‘It’s not that; it’s not that!’ said Mrs. O’Beirne. Then her face began to work piteously. ‘ God bless you, dear! God bless you!’

After she was left alone, she sat down in the rocking-chair, always with the same still face, the same thoughthaunted eyes. Her hands lay idle in her lap. She did not rock to and fro. And thus she sat all the afternoon.

As she was undressing for bed, she said aloud, ‘But I’m going to pay it back, — every cent.’ And presently, ‘I would tell them — then — I borrowed it.’

After the dawn came she slept. In the morning when she opened her eyes she said, ‘She won’t never think the same of me again.’

Late that afternoon Miss Marshall brought her the money. She looked at it and then at Miss Marshall. ’You mean — you’re going to leave it with me ? ’

Tears sprang into Miss Marshall’s eyes. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she exclaimed, ‘of course I am!'

’But you can’t never think the same of me again,’said Mrs. O ’Beirne. ' You can’t! ’

When she was alone she pressed her hands to her eyes and said, ‘ I feel like she was dead.’

In the middle of the night she cried out aloud: ‘O God! Why can’t I tell them?’

There was a full attendance at the Mothers’ Club. Miss Marshall sat beside the president. Mrs. O’Beirne came in late and, despite the frantic beckonings of Mary Flanagan, sat at the back of the room, her heavy veil over her face. In one hand she held the purse. Between the fingers of the other she nervously twisted a little piece of paper on which she had written: ‘The Mothers’ Club tenders to the Settlement as a slight testimonial of regard this money to furnish a club-room for our fellow neighbors, the Greeks, in token of our brotherly feelings on behalf of them, and our worthy desire to cooperate with the Settlement to preserve a high tone to the neighborhood.’

After the roll and the minutes, there was offered and adopted a long and involved resolution of sympathy and affection for their beloved and honored treasurer in her present deep affliction. The president then cleared her throat, and declared that no one would disagree with her that this was the happiest day in the existence of the club, because it was beginning to live for other people. But she would leave the exposure of their good intentions to the person who had them first: ’Our devoted Treasurer, our eloquent Orator, our bereaved Fellow Member, Mrs. Nora O’Beirne.’

Mrs. O’Beirne, very erect, but with a curiously slow, groping step, walked up the aisle. At the president’s table she put back her veil and clumsily, because she also held the purse, unfolded the scrap of paper on which she had written her speech. Her face was gaunt and white; there were deep circles under her heavy eyes, deep lines about her tragically defiant mouth. She lifted her eyes to Miss Marshall, she opened her lips to speak, she looked at the purse held out in her hand, — and back to Miss Marshall; and then she began to laugh, — very loud, horribly loud, — a scream that ran into high sobbing and back again into laughter. The president, though no orator, now proved herself swift in action. Quick as thought she had lifted the glass water-pitcher from the table and dashed its contents full in Mrs. O’Beirne’s face.

‘ Holy Mother! ’ shrieked Mary Flanagan. ‘ Look what you done to her new veil! ’

The audience stood up; there was a hubbub of sound, above which rose the gurgling of Mrs. O’Beirne’s halfquenched hysterics. Miss Marshall, one arm around the widow, who had collapsed upon her shoulder, waved the mothers back to their seats with the other.

‘ It was seeing how the Lord had got the laugh on the whole lot of us with that money, set me off,’ sobbed Mrs. O’Beirne, with face hidden.

‘ Come out with me, dear,’whispered Miss Marshall. But Mrs. O’Beirne turned about and faced the audience, her eyes streaming with tears, her cheeks sodden and purple.

’I am a thief!’ she said. ‘And it’s only Miss Marshall’s goodness that I ’m not in the lock-up, — where I belong.’

The Mothers’ Club thought she had gone crazy.

‘ Come away, dear,’ urged Miss Marshall; but Mrs. O’Beirne was past hearing anything now but the voice of her own conscience. She flung the purse from her.

’That ain’t the Club money!’ she cried. ‘That’s Miss Marshall’s money, she lent me so I need n’t to be put to shame before the Club. It’s just her own money you ’re giving back to her, that’s all. You thought you was going to furnish a club-room for the Greeks, but you’re not; you’ve paid for the funeral of Barney O’Beirne. I stole the money because I could n’t bear that anybody should know Barney and me was too poor to pay the undertaker. And then, the coward I was, I could n’t face the Club. And I was that mad against all the world you’d have thought it was the world was the thief instead of me. And all the time I was telling Miss Marshall what I’d done, I would n’t see it was more than any other kind of borrowing, and I was cursing her in my heart because she could n’t know what it was to be as poor as we was, and she’d sure say I’d ought to tell what I’d done, and resign from the treasurership, and be put out of the Club. That’s what she’d say, I says. And my heart was like a stone against her. But she did n’t say it. She never said one word of reproach to me. No! she says, “I’m not sure I can get so much money so quick, — but I’ll do my best. — If I had had your temptation I might have did the same as you did, ’ she says. And I could feel the hardness of my heart begin to melt when she said them loving words. And I blew cold on it with my pride, because I was afraid of what I’d do if my heart got soft. But it’s no use, — it’s no use, — for it’s been melting ever since, till now it’s just running water. I’ve lost my pride, — and I ’ve lost my good name,’ — the agony in her words resounded through the room, — ‘but God bless Miss Marshall!’

Again the tears gushed down her cheeks. ’It’s done!’ she cried, wringing her hands together. ‘Take me away! Take me away!’

It was fully five minutes before the strident voice of Mary Flanagan could dominate the clamorous babel.

’Here’s the money!’ she cried, shaking the purse in the excited faces before her. ‘I say this is between Mrs. O’Beirne and Miss Marshall, — and none of our business. If Miss Marshall chooses to lend Mrs. O’Beirne one hundred dollars, — what’s that to us? Mrs. O’Beirne has made good to the Club, and that’s all the Club has a right to ask.’

’No, it is not all the Club has a right to ask,’ shouted the gaunt woman who had spoken with emphasis on a previous occasion. ‘Won’t she use it again? — that’s what I want to know. And who’s to say Miss Marshall ’ll always be willing to lend?’

‘Ah, poor thing!’ exclaimed Mrs. Morrison. ‘A husband can’t die but once.’

' I ’ve known them to die three times,’ snapped the wiry woman.

‘Well, I’ll say this, right now,’ said Mary Flanagan. ‘If Mrs. O’Beirne is run out of this club I go out with her, and there’s others I know will follow.’

‘Who’s talking about running her out,’ retorted the gaunt woman. ’All I say is, I don’t pay another due if she stays treasurer. My money comes too hard.’

’I do think she’d ought to resign,’ observed the president timidly.

‘Well, I don’t!’ protested Mary Flanagan. ’If Miss Marshall is willing to give her another chance we’d ought to be ashamed not to.’

A few heads nodded acquiescence, but the Club, as a whole, was sullen.

’How would it be if we was to let her stay treasurer, if Miss Marshall would keep the money for us?’ suggested Mrs. Morrison.

A good many heads nodded this time; and the vote was carried.

But Mrs. O’Beirne resigned.