Mrs. Kenny, with prodigal hospitality, took Molly in for over Sunday.
Fairfax walked alongside of her to his boarding-house, carrying the
imitation leather bag, talking to her, laughing with her, calling the
colour back and making her eyes bright. He found himself, with his young
lady, before the threshold of Kenny's hotel. "Gents only." Whether this
was the rule or an idea only, Fairfax wondered, for Molly was not the
first one of the gentler sex who had been cordially entertained in the
boarding-house! Mrs. Kenny's sister and her sister's child, her mother
and aunts three, had successively come down on the hotel during
Fairfax's passing, and been lavishly entertained, anywhere and
everywhere, even under Fairfax's feet, for he had come out one morning
from his door to find two little girls sleeping on a mattress in the
hall.
All his lifelong Fairfax retained an adoration for landladies. They had
such tempting opportunities to display qualities that console and
ennoble, and the landladies with whom he had come in contact took
advantage of their opportunities! It didn't seem enough to wait five
weeks for a chap to pay up, when one's own rent was due, but the
landlady must buy chicken at ruinous prices when a chap was ill, and
make soup and put rice in it, and carry it steaming, flecked with rich
golden grease, put pot-pie balls in it and present it to a famishing
fireman who could do no more than kiss the hand, the chapped hand, that
brought the bowl.
* * * * *
"Now _wud_ ye, Misther Fairfax?"
He would, as if it had been his mother's!
Nut Street was moral, domestic and in proportion severe. Mary Kenny had
not been born there; she had come with her husband from the
happy-go-lucky, pig-harbouring shanties of County Cork. She was the
most unprejudiced soul in the neighbourhood. Between boarders, a lazy
husband, six children and bad debts, she had little time to gossip, but
plenty of time in which to be generous.
"I _wull_ that!" she assured Molly. "Ye'll sleep in the kitchen on a
shakedown, and the divil knows where it'll shake _from_ for I haven't a
spare bed in the house!"
Molly would only stay till Monday.... Fairfax put her little bag on the
kitchen table, where a coarse cloth was spread, and the steam greeted
them of a real Irish stew, and the odour of less genuine coffee tickled
their appetites.
Molly Shannon considered Fairfax in his new Easter Sunday spring
clothes. From his high collar, white as Nut Street could white it, to
his polished boots--he was a pleasant thing to look upon. His cravat was
as blue as his eyes. His moustache was brushed carefully from his young,
well-made mouth, and he beamed with good humour on every one.
"Shure, dinner's dished, and the childer and Kenny are up to the
cemetery pickin' vi'lets. Set right down, the rest will be along. Set
down, Misther Fairfax and Molly Shannon."
After dinner, up in his room, the walls seemed to have contracted. The
kitchen's smoky air rose even here, and he flung his window wide to the
April sweetness. The atmosphere was too windless to come in and wrestle
with the smell of frying, but he saw the day was golden as a draught
waiting to be quaffed. The restricted schedule of Sunday cast a quiet
over the yards, and from the distance Fairfax heard sounds that were not
distinguishable in the weekday confusion, the striking of the hour from
the Catholic Church bell, the voices of the children playing in the
streets. There was a letter lying on his bureau from his mother: he had
not had the heart to read it to-day. The gymnasium was shut for repairs,
there was no ball game on for Easter Day, and, after a second's
hesitation, he caught up his hat from where he had dropped it at his
feet and rushed downstairs into the kitchen.
Molly, her sleeves rolled up, was washing dishes for Mrs. Kenny.
"Don't you want to come out with me for a walk?" Fairfax asked her.
"Go along," said Mrs. Kenny, giving her a shove with her bare elbow.
"I'll make out alone fine. The suds is elegant. If you meet Kenny and
the children, tell them there's not a bit left but the lashins of the
stew, and to hurry up."