THE LUCK OF THE IRISH
stone wall around her thoughts. She was a weak and contemptible thing, no better than the painted woman in the street. Did one inherit moral as well as physical characteristics? Were there such things as sixteenths, thirty-seconds, sixty-fourths handed down from generation to generation? Was she merely a fractional reincarnation of her mother, who had run away from her father upon the plea of loneliness and neglect? She had been nine then; five years later, beaten, broken, dying, the mother had returned. And this wasn't lesson enough!
Her father! She thought of him with a tender smile. The poor benign dreamer, forever delving into scientific research, in the world but not of it, scarcely realizing that his wife had forsaken him, that he had a child to bring up! He had taken back the mother without a word of reproach, and an hour later the doctor had found him puttering among his retorts. Loneliness and neglect that had been her mother's excuse, and with some justice. But what excuse had she, her mother's daughter?
"It 'll take half an hour, miss."
"Don't hurry the poor horse," she replied, mechanically.
The cartman shifted his quid and spat surreptitiously, concluding that his customer had been turned out for not paying her rent. It was no new story to him. Somebody was always moving, because it was cheaper to move than whack down the rent. Well, it was all grist to his mill; he
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