and get a bit of food for Dermot. It was not left altogether to her. There was scarcely a day that Michael's mother used not to drop in there. And the day she was not there Short Mary herself used to be there. And what the neighbours used to say was that Dermot used to make greater progress toward recovery during the piece of a day that she would spend talking to him, than during the whole of the rest of the time. Dermot himself used to say that he felt as if a cloud were lifted off his heart when he used to see her coming in at his door.
What everyone said was that it was well for him that Sive was not at home near him while he was sick, because he could not possibly have recovered while she was there, for if he were just at a crisis and that anything happened to cross her, she would fly into a rage, and bring a relapse upon him, as surely as her name was Sive.
That was the opinion of the neighbours, but that was not Dermot's own opinion. In his estimation, there was nothing keeping him on the flat of his back but the fact that she was not coming home, nor any tidings of her. From morning till night there used to be no subject of conversation between himself and the neighbours who came in but "where was she?" or "what was keeping her?" or "whether she was dead or alive." "If she was alive, why didn't somebody hear news of her? If she was dead, why was not an account of her death coming from some quarter? Surely she could not be killed without some one's knowing it. If she were killed in the middle of the night and her body thrown into some hole, surely it would be found the next day, and the news would spread through the country, and Sheeghy would
