"A moment, ma'am," he replied.

Next instant he was by her side, and very gallantly led her to the outer hall and over to the elevator man. That Mecca of information scratched his head before venturing to a.s.sist them, then he hazarded, briskly, "Fifth floor, No. 682."

"If that's wrong, come back," the young man said, kindly, as he left her.

The elevator drew her up almost before she could catch her breath, and landed her on the fifth floor. The man pointed along a hallway, and she followed this until a name in big gilt letters arrested her attention and caused her heart to flutter spasmodically. "Cornelius McVeigh--Investments," it read. And this was really her son's Eldorado! A mist crept over her eyes as she turned the bra.s.s k.n.o.b and entered. A score of young men and women were before her, busily engaged at desks, writing and sorting over papers. Beyond them, other doors led to inner offices, and from some invisible quarter a peculiar clicking cast a disturbing influence. Whilst she was taking it in, in great sweeping glances, a small boy stepped saucily up and demanded her wishes.

"I'm Mistress McVeigh, o' the Monk Road, an' I've come to see Cornelius," she told him.

The boy looked at her, whistled over his shoulder and grimaced.

"What yer givin' us, missus?" he asked.

"I'll have ye understand I'll take no impudence," she retorted, wrathfully, shaking her parasol handle at him.

"If yer wants the boss, he's out," he informed her, with more civility.

"Is there anything I can do?" a young lady asked, coming over to her from her desk.

"It's just Mister McVeigh that I want to see. I'm his mother," Nancy replied, simply.

"You are his mother!" the girl exclaimed, doubtfully.

"That I am," Nancy declared, emphatically.

"Mr. McVeigh is out of the city, but Mr. Keene is here. Will he do?"

she again questioned.

At this juncture someone stepped briskly from an inner room, and then a man dashed impetuously across the general office, scattering books and clerks in his eagerness, and crying, "Why, it's Mrs. McVeigh!" as he caught her gaunt body in his arms.

"Johnny, me lad, is it yerself?" she gasped, after he had desisted from his attempts to smother her.

Young John Keene held Nancy's hand within his own whilst he showed her everything of interest in the office, for the mother loved it all because it was her son's. The clerks were courteous and attentive, and the girls fell in love with the quaint old lady on the spot.

"It's fer all the world like a school," she murmured in young John's ear.

"And I'm the big boy," he answered, laughing.

A telegram searched the far corners of Mexico that afternoon, and at an unheard-of place, with an unp.r.o.nounceable name, it found Cornelius McVeigh, the centre of a group of gentlemen. The party had just emerged from the yawning mouth of a mine, and were resting in the sunshine and expelling the foul air from their lungs, whilst the young promoter of the western metropolis was explaining, from a sheet of paper covered with figures, the cost of base metal to the producer.

The mine foreman suddenly interrupted his remarks with a yellow envelope, which he thrust respectfully forward. "A telegram, sir," he said, and withdrew. The array of men sighed gratefully at the respite, and Cornelius McVeigh hastily scanned the message.

"Your mother in Chicago, much disappointed at your absence. When may we expect you?" so it read.

The young man folded it carefully, put it into his pocket and continued his discourse, but his words were losing their pointedness, and he was occasionally absent-minded.

"It's dinner-time. I move an adjournment to the hotel," one of the grey-haired capitalists suggested, and, with scant dignity for men of such giant interests, they hurried to take advantage of the break in the negotiations. Cornelius McVeigh did not go in to lunch, but strolled the length of the verandah for a full hour, absorbed in thought, then with characteristic energy he hastened to the little telegraph room and wrote a reply to his home office:

"Will close a great deal if I stay. Cannot leave for a week at least.

Persuade mother to wait."

He then walked to the smoking apartments, where his late a.s.sociates were trying to forget business.

"I am ready, gentlemen," he observed, in his crisp, convincing manner of speech.

Young John Keene handed the message to the Widow McVeigh. He knew it would hurt, and his arm stole about her shoulders as it did when he was the scamp of the Monk Road gossip.

"I'm tired o' this great noisy city," she faltered, after she had studied the message a long time. "I'm no feelin' meself at all, at all, an' my head hurts. I must be goin' home."

"You shall stay with me, Nancy. Corney will be back in ten days at the least. My wife wishes it, as well as myself, and we want you to see our little Nancy. That's our baby," he said, in lower tones.

Nancy gazed at the hurrying people on the hot pavements below, at the buildings that shot upwards past her line of vision, at the countless windows and tangled wires; then she turned to young John and he knew that she had seen none of them.

"I'll try, Johnny," she answered.

The days that followed were battles with weariness to Nancy McVeigh.

She did not complain, but her silence only aggravated the loneliness which had crept into her soul. Young John Keene talked to her, amused her, cajoled her, pleaded with her, and yet her mood was impenetrable.

Even tiny Nancy Keene's dimpled fingers could not take away the strange unrest in her eyes. Then, when the ten days had elapsed, a second message came: "Kiss mother and tell her to wait. Can't return for another week. Am writing." Nancy read it and cried; not weakly, like a woman, but with harsh, dry sobs.

"I'll be goin' home in the mornin'," she said, firmly.

The train took her away in the damp, sunless early hours, when the city was just awakening.

"She's crazed with homesickness," young John's wife confided to her husband, in a hushed, sad voice.

The way home was long, and Nancy chafed at the slowness of the express.

So long as it was light she watched from the car window, and not till the pleasant quiet of the vicinity of Monk Road was reached did the gloom-cloud rise from her face. Her heart seemed to beat free once more, and her eyes were full of tears, but they were tears of happiness. She left the train at Monk, and the first person to greet her was Father Doyle, who by chance was at the station. He read a tale of disappointment in his old friend's appearance, and he remarked, sympathetically, "You are looking thin and tired, Mistress McVeigh."

"It's a weary day, sure enough," she admitted. The two walked side by side, the stout priest carrying her heaviest travelling bags, until they came to the road which the summer hotel management had built in a direct line from the station to their gate, and here Nancy stopped abruptly.

"Well, if the old tavern isn't right over there, just as I left it,"

she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, and a smile broke over her countenance the like of which it had not known for days past.

CHAPTER IX.

_THE KERRY DANCERS._

Nancy McVeigh treasured her disappointment over the visit to Chicago for many months, but only Katie Duncan and those who saw her daily knew of it. She was not the strong, self-reliant Nancy whom people had so long a.s.sociated with the ramshackle inn of Monk Road. But her smile grew sweeter and her sympathies ran riot on every side where little troubles beset her less fortunate neighbors. Her mind turned oftener to the church which stood on the side-road, beyond the home of Father Doyle, and her influence for a better life was remarkable with the younger generation. The stormy period of her own existence was past, and like a silvery rivulet twinkling in the sun at the mountain crest, speeding downward until it roars and foams in an angry cataract, then emerging into the cool, placid stream, lazily flowing past the village cottages and on through the silent woodland, she had reached a stage where only goodness and friendship mattered.

Her great neighbor, the summer hotel proprietor, was perhaps the solitary person who did not understand her. In vain he waited patiently, as the seasons opened and closed, for her to accede to his importunities to sell her property. There the old inn stood, a blot within the terraced grounds and clean-cut park, unsightly to his eyes, and the humorous b.u.t.t of his patrons. But Nancy had made her plans when the new order of things was first suggested, and she turned her rugged face to the sandy Monk Road and held her peace.

Cornelius, her son, had written her often and voluminously since her trip southwards. He had also made a definite promise that he would come home the very next summer. 'Twas this that brightened her eyes and put a lightness into her step. It also provided a subject of constant conversation between herself and Katie Duncan. Together they would count out the months and weeks and days to the time when he should arrive.

"The lad's worried, so he is, an' he wants to see his ould mother, in spoite o' his foine clothes an' his dealin's," she repeated, during those happy confidences.

Although Nancy had abandoned the public service, yet hers was no humdrum existence. She still had duties to perform which occupied her thoughts from daylight to dusk. She frequently visited the Dodonas, who lived in the big Piper house. And the Piper children played about her front door, much as her own son and Johnny Keene had done so many years before. Other children, too, found the vicinity of the widow McVeigh's a very tempting resort, and their parents were well satisfied, for they had learned to love and respect the white-haired woman who chose to be their guardian.