Free Men of No Property by Dorothy Salisbury Davis Page A

by The Valiant… the good ship, Valiant, Thomas Dunne…go to The Valiant… ”
    The crowd dwindled and the runners, run down, passed a bottle amongst themselves. Dockhands herded the stragglers out of the way of preparations to unload The Valiant of her heavy cargo.
    Dunne, Thomas Dunne, Dennis thought. Done truly. The child was fretful and hungry. So were they all hungry, and the temper was rising in Peg’s eyes. The priest looked solemn. He looked as though the only prayers he ever said were at a wake. “We’ll find him, my boy,” he kept saying. “Pray to God and we shall find him.”
    Kevin took a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and opened it to stare at its face a moment. He closed it again, and all as though one had been dangled to him in his cradle, Dennis thought. Kevin replaced the watch and ran his fingers along the gold chain. Then he smiled broadly.
    “Well, how often in a lifetime do you come to America!” he said heartily and rubbed his hands together. “We’ll hire a coach and go home till we’ve found him.” And the tone in which he said it made it seem as though Thomas Dunne had had his chance and lost it.
    Dennis felt himself near to tears. “All of us?” he said, before he could measure the tact in it.
    “All save the priest,” Kevin said in high humor. “You’re invited to a Sunday dinner, Father Shea, Thirty-nine Cherry Street, a long block from the market.”
    This was interesting, Dennis thought, if he had but the time to ponder it. By all the signs, in America the priest came when he was invited.
    Kevin had turned to the girls, and already had Emma in his arms. “I’ve a fair house and a willin’ wife,” he said. “Are you from Dublin?”
    “We are,” Peg said.
    “Then you’ll be welcome as the flowers in May.”
    “Have you childer’, Mister Lavery?” Norah asked.
    He smiled and all the lines of his face converged in the rays of pleasure. “I have,” he said. “Two gallus ones.” There was no doubting the pride intended in the words.

2
    M ARY LAVERY WAS EVERY bit as willing as her husband promised. She stood at the top of the steps, her arms open to Dennis and to all who came with him, making no more of their entrance than to count them off against the number of plates in the cupboard. She was never a beauty, Dennis decided, but her heart was as big as the bosom heaving over it. Her hair was flaming, heaped on the top of her head like a bank of live coals and her face was but a shade lighter in her excitement. She proclaimed a stew that would stick to their ribs to be waiting on the back of the stove and the water boiling for tea. “We’re not stayin’ long,” Norah said in the doorway.
    “She’s leavin’ before she’s come!” Mary cried and gave Norah a little nudge into the house. “Go in and settle yerself. Is the house rockin’ to you ?”
    “It is after the boat.”
    Mary gave a great laugh. “The day I got off the boat I’d of swore the Lord was jugglin’ the earth in one hand and the sun in the other. Ah, isn’t she sweet, poor thing?” She had discovered Emma. “Sally!” she called out, and then to Emma said coaxingly, “I’ve the one that’ll love you, pet.” To the girls she said, “My Sally is five and there’s nothin’ she wants more in this world than a baby.” She gave Peg a poke with her elbow as Sally came in from the kitchen. “They cost a great deal of money, comin’ all the way from heaven in a bird’s pocket, but I promised I’d buy her one when she grows up.”
    “Hey, Denny, come back down here and give me a hand.”
    Dennis went out the door and down the steps at the side of the building. The Laverys lived over Kevin’s carpentry shop. The whole of Cherry Street seemed a combination of homes and factories. It had the look of running more to manufacturing although the houses serving both had carried an air of respectability into old age. There was an iron fence here and there and the heads on the hitching