A Woman Undefeated by Vivienne Dockerty Read Free Book Online Page A

any traveller walking after dark. Swinging the mattress over her back, she trudged slowly to her friend’s garden wall.
    Maggie draped the mattress as best she could at the side of the cottage door. She peeped into the window to see the widow, pottering near the fireplace, talking away to someone that Maggie couldn’t see. Curious to know who the visitor was, she craned her neck to see who her friend was talking to. It was Johnny, Widow Dockerty’s eldest son! He was sitting in the padded winged chair, his long legs stretched out onto the hearth. In one hand he held a plate of stew, in the other a hunk of bread. She felt a surge ofdelight at seeing him. He had seemed a friendly man when she had met him before. Perhaps Johnny would see that she found her way home safely?
    Maggie tapped lightly on the window. Johnny turned around to look, while his mother bustled across the room to the door.
    “Maggie!”, she exclaimed, when she saw the girl standing there shivering. “I was going to watch out for your return, but look who arrived not half an hour ago? Come in, come in. Whatever’s that you’ve brought along with you?”
    She looked past Maggie to where the feather mattress was leaning drunkenly against her cottage wall.
    Maggie whispered that it was a feather mattress that the Filbey’s had given her. She was beginning to feel shy now that she was going to be in Johnny’s presence again. He had got up from his chair politely, when his mother had opened the door and had come to stand behind her, smiling in amusement when he saw Maggie’s acquisition, no doubt wondering why she would be carting a mattress about in the dark and across the treacherous moor.
    “Bring it in with you girl, it’s beginning to rain again,” Kathleen said. “It already looks filthy, but no point in making it worse than it is.”
    Both Johnny and his mother smiled at one another benignly, no doubt thinking that the girl must have been desperate to have accepted a castoff so obviously ready for the bonfire. Then Kathleen hurried over to the stew pot, while Johnny helped Maggie to carry the mattress in.
    “I’d made enough stew for you to take to your mother and sister,” Kathleen said, “but you can eat yours now before you go, if you want.”
    She was soon serving the ravenous Maggie with a plate of hot and appetizing beef and vegetable stew, while Johnny pleaded for a second helping.
    “Mother is the best cook in Ireland in my opinion,” he said, after she had put another steaming plate of stew in front of him. “That’s why I hurry home so often to be at her fireside.”
    His mother was beginning to look her age though, he noted, as he sank back into his chair with a satisfied sigh. The hair that she wore in a bun on the top of her head looked whiter than he remembered before. Her skin was more wrinkled and rather lacklustre, though she still had her usual twinkle in her attractive hazel eyes. His dad had said that Mother had been a looker in her young days. She could have had any man in Galway, but she had chosen him. An odd match, his parents. She being small in height, gentle in her ways and educated and his father loud and brusque, a big bull of a man who could hardly add up his takings at the end of the day. Johnny adored his mother. It was just like her to befriend this bedraggled looking creature and just like her to be giving away food to the poor.
    Maggie wouldn’t have been happy if she had known Johnny’s thoughts at that moment. She was in awe of him because of his status, admired his handsome looks and felt a stirring of excitement to be in his company again, because in her eyes she was a family friend. Her pride would have been severely dented if she had known his thoughts, though at that time she would have admitted to being needy and poor.
    She searched for words, in between mouthfuls of satisfying dinner, to engage Johnny in interesting conversation. She didn’t want him to think that she was brainless, or a