"I was
reckonin' it the 'leventh."
"Ay, th' twelfth--tho' I've most lost count. I buried one, you know."
"For my part," put in a pale-eyed blonde, who sat near the door, "'t
seems but yestiddy I was here with Alsia yonder." She nodded her head
towards a girl of five who was screwing herself round in her chair and
trying to peep out of the window.
"Ay, they come and come: the Lord knows wherefore," the tall woman
assented. "When they'm young they make your arms ache, an' when they
grow up they make your heart ache."
"But 'Melia Penaluna's been here more times than any of us," said the
blonde with a titter, directing her eyes towards a corner of the room.
The rest looked too, and laughed. Turning, I saw that the plain-faced
woman had unwound her comforter, and now I could see, hanging low on
her chest, an immense lump wrapped in clean white linen and bound up
with a gaudy yellow handkerchief. It was a goitre.
"Iss, my dears," she answered, touching it and smiling, but with tears
in her eyes; "this here's my only child, an' iver will be.
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