Collected Stories Read Online Free PDF

well?’
    â€œâ€˜Good-night, Henry,’ says I.
    â€œâ€˜Good-night, Larry. Tomorrow we’ll revive the Mollies.’
    â€œNellie went to see me to the door, and outside was the two ladies and the young gentleman in their nighties, listening.
    â€œâ€˜Who is it, Mother?’ says they.
    â€œâ€˜Go back to bed the three of ye!’ says Nellie. ‘ ’Tis only your father.’
    â€œâ€˜Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ says the three of them together.
    â€œAt that minit we heard Henry inside bawling his heart out.
    â€œâ€˜Nellie, Nellie, where are you, Nellie?’
    â€œâ€˜Go back and see what he wants,’ says I, ‘before I go.’
    â€œSo Nellie opened the door and looked in.
    â€œâ€˜What’s wrong with you now?’ says she.
    â€œâ€˜You’re not going to leave me sleep alone, Nellie,’ says he.
    â€œâ€˜You ought to be ashamed of yourself,’ says she, ‘talking like that and the children listening.… Look at him,’ says she to me, ‘look at him for the love of God!’ The eyes were shining in her head with pure relief. So I peeped in, and there was Henry with every bit of clothes in the bed around him and his back to us all. ‘Look at his ould gray pate!’ says she.
    â€œâ€˜Still in all,’ says Henry over his shoulder, ‘you had no right to say I was dead!’”

The Bridal Night
    I T WAS sunset, and the two great humps of rock made a twilight in the cove where the boats were lying high up the strand. There was one light only in a little whitewashed cottage. Around the headland came a boat and the heavy dipping of its oars was like a heron’s flight. The old woman was sitting on the low stone wall outside her cottage.
    â€œâ€™Tis a lonesome place,” said I.
    â€œâ€™Tis so,” she agreed, “a lonesome place, but any place is lonesome without one you’d care for.”
    â€œYour own flock are gone from you, I suppose?” I asked.
    â€œI never had but the one,” she replied, “the one son only,” and I knew because she did not add a prayer for his soul that he was still alive.
    â€œIs it in America he is?” I asked. (It is to America all the boys of the locality go when they leave home.)
    â€œNo, then,” she replied simply. “It is in the asylum in Cork he is on me these twelve years.”
    I had no fear of trespassing on her emotions. These lonesome people in the wild places, it is their nature to speak; they must cry out their sorrows like the wild birds.
    â€œGod help us!” I said. “Far enough!”
    â€œFar enough,” she sighed. “Too far for an old woman. There was a nice priest here one time brought me up in his car to see him. All the ways to this wild place he brought it, and he drove me into the city. It is a place I was never used to, but it eased my mind to see poor Denis well-cared-for and well-liked. It was a trouble to me before that, not knowing would they see what a good boy he was before his madness came on him. He knew me; he saluted me, but he said nothing until the superintendent came to tell me the tea was ready for me. Then poor Denis raised his head and says: ‘Leave ye not forget the toast. She was ever a great one for her bit of toast.’ It seemed to give him ease and he cried after. A good boy he was and is. It was like him after seven long years to think of his old mother and her little bit of toast.”
    â€œGod help us,” I said for her voice was like the birds’, hurrying high, immensely high, in the colored light, out to sea to the last islands where their nests were.
    â€œBlessed be His holy will,” the old woman added, “there is no turning aside what is in store. It was a teacher that was here at the time. Miss Regan her name was. She was a fine big jolly girl from the town. Her father had a shop there. They said she had three hundred pounds to