We've been
workin' all we can and we only just manage to pay the rent and live,
and here's the summer over and the winter coming, and how will we pay
the rent then?"
The mother did not answer this question directly. She began talking in
a way that did not seem to have anything to do with the rent, though
it really had something to do with it, in her own mind, and perhaps in
her son's mind too.
"It's over-tired that you are with your hard day's work, Shaun," she
said, "and that and seeing Kitty so tired, too, has maybe made you
look at things a little worse than they are. We've never been so bad
off as many of our neighbors; you know that. And yet I know it's been
worse of late and harder for you than it might have been, and you
can't remember the better times that our family had, and that's why
you forget that the times were ever better. No, you wasn't born then,
but the time was when good luck seemed to follow your father and me
everywhere and always. Yes, and the good luck has not all left us
yet, though we had the bad luck to lose your father so long ago.
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