Foley's bar

There was a danger in gping home, a danger of being asked, to do their homework. To avoid this for as long as possible, the girls dallied on their way back from school.

There wsa never much to look at in the post office; the same things had been in the window for years: pictures of stamps, notices about post office savings stamps and books, the rates on the letters going to America. They wouldn't delay long there. Mrs Hanley's, the drapery shop, sometimes had nice Fair Isle jumpers and the occasional pair of shoes you ight like. But Mrs Hanley didn't like schoolgirls fathering around the window in case it put other people off. She would come out and shoo them away like hens.

'That's right. Off with you. Off with you.' she would say, sweeping them ahed of her.

Then they would creep past Foley's bar with the our smell of porter coming out, and on past Sullivan's garage, where old Mr Sullivan might be drunk and shout at them, calling attention to their presence. This would be dangerous because McMahon's pharmacy was right across the road and someone would surely be alerted by the shouting. They could look in Wall's hardware in case there was anything exciting like a pair of new sharp shears, or across the road in the Central Hotel, where you might see visitors coming out if you were lucky. Usually you just saw Philip -o'Brien's awful father glowering at everyone. There was the meat shop, which made them feel a bit sick. They could go into Dillion's and look at birthday ards and pretend they were going to buy, but the Dillons never let them read the comics or magazines.

Kit's mother would have found them a million thing to do if they went home to McMahon's. She could show them how to make shortbread, and Rita the maid would watch too. She might get them plant a window box, or show them how to take cuttings that would grow. The McMAhons didnt have a proper garden like the Kellys did,ony a yard at the back.

But it was full of plants climbing out of barrels and up walls. Kit's mother had shown them how to do calligraphy and they had written 'Happy Feat Day' for Mother Bernard.

It was in lovely writing that looked as if a monk had done it. Mother Bernard still kept it in her prayer book. Or sometimes she would show them her collection of cigarette cards and the gifts she was going to get when she had a book filled with them.

But Clio often asked things like 'What does your mother do all day, that she has so much time to spend with us?' It seemed like a criticism. As if Mother should be doing something more important, like going out to tea with people the way Mrs Kelly did. Kit didnt want to give Clio the chance to find fault, so she didnt often invite her home.

The thing they liked doing most was going to see Sister Madeleine, they hermit who lived in a very small cottage by the lake. Sister Madeline had great fun being a hermit, because everyone worried about her and brought her food and firewood.

No one could remember when she had some to live in the old abandoned cottage at the waters edge.

People were vague about what community Sister Madeline had belonged to at one times, and why she had left. But nobody doubted her saintliness.

Sister Madeleine saw only good in people and animals. Her bent figure was to be seen scattering crumbs for the birds, or stroking the most snarling and bad-tempered dog. She had a tame fox, which came to lap up a saucer of bread and milk in the evenings, and she was rarely without splints to mend a broken wing of a bird she had found on her travels.

Father Baily and Mother Bernard, together with Brother Healy from the boys school, had decided to make Sister Madeline welcome rather than regard her with suspicion. As fat as could be worked out, she believed in the one true God, and did not object to the way any of them interpreted His will.

She attended Mass queitly at the back of the church on Sundays, setting herself up as no rival pulpit.

Even Doctor Kelly, Clio's father, said that Sister Madeline knew as much as he did about some things: childbirth, and how to console the dying.