She gave him a couple of potatoes from a pot on the
fire, and, what served him better, a mug of spring water. He slept a
little now and again, and sometimes he heard her singing to herself
as she moved about the house, and so the night wore away. When the
sky began to brighten with the dawn he felt for the bag; where his
little store of money was, and held it out to her, and she took out a
bit of copper and a bit of silver money, but she let it drop again as
if it was nothing to her, maybe because it was not money she was used
to beg for, but food and rags; or maybe because the rising of the
dawn was filling her with pride and a new belief in her own great
beauty. She went out and cut a few armfuls of heather, and brought it
in and heaped it over Hanrahan, saying something about the cold of
the morning, and while she did that he took notice of the wrinkles in
her face, and the greyness of her hair, and the broken teeth that
were black and full of gaps. And when he was well covered with the
heather she went out of the door and away down the side of the
mountain, and he could hear her cry, 'I am beautiful, I am
beautiful,' getting less and less as she went, till at last it died
away altogether.
Hanrahan lay there through the length of the day, in his pains and
his weakness, and when the shadows of the evening were falling he
heard her voice again coming up the hillside, and she came in and
boiled the potatoes and shared them with him the same way as before.
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