On the following Saturday, at five in the afternoon, the previous hours
having been filled with a long list of errands of all sorts, yet all
having to do with people, and the people's affairs, seldom his own, Brown
turned his steps home-ward. The steps lagged a little, for he was tired.

At the house next his own--a shabby little house, yet with rows of
blooming scarlet geraniums in tin cans on its two lower window sills, and
clean, if patched, muslin curtains behind the plants--Brown turned in
once more. Standing in the kitchen doorway he put a question:

"Mrs. Kelcey, may I borrow Norah for an hour?"

The person addressed looked up from her work, grinned a broad Irish
grin, pushed back a lock of bothersome hair with a soapy hand, and
answered heartily:

"To be shure ye may, Misther Brown. I says to mesilf an hour ago, I says,
'Happen he'll come for Nory to-night, it bein' Saturday night, an' him
bein' apt to come of a Saturday night.' So I give her her bath early, to
get her out o' the way before the bhoys come home. So it's clane she is,
if she ain't got into no mischief the half hour."

She dashed into the next room and returned triumphant, her youngest
daughter on her arm. Five minutes later Brown bore little Norah Kelcey
into his bachelor domain, wrapped in her mother's old plaid shawl, her
blue eyes looking expectantly from its folds. It was not the first time
she had paid a visit to the place--she remembered what there was in store
for her there. She was just two years old, was Norah, a mere slip of an
Irish baby, with a tangled mop of dark curls above eyes of deep blue set