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though for the moment. He had that wonderful feeling of being married, and of heading home to a place marked with his name in blue and yellow. He took Kitty’s basket, and in reaching across her to do it, picked up the malty aroma of stout she gave off.
Recommended for Carrying and Nursing Mothers
.
    When Tim took the basket, letting go of Hector’s hand, Hector immediately walked around and claimed Kitty’s right hand.
    “There you are, darling,” she told him.
    But it sounded a little brisk and offhand to Tim. She didn’t want to make any promises.
    She said, “I’ve been choosing the moment to tell you. I had a letter from the last visit of
Burrawong
. My young sister Mamie has already arranged to come here and has been accepted by New South Wales. You’d think the bloody Macleay was the centre of the universe, wouldn’t you?”
    “Jesus!” said Tim.
    “Thought you’d say that.” She’d left the “h” out of words as everyone did in the part of North Cork they came from. He’d tried to put it into his diction, since that lost “h” was something the bigots used to beat you on the head with, or at least to justifyderision. Kitty however was never going to try. He’d both admired and regretted her for that.
    “I’ve only known myself about Mamie since Thursday,” she said. “The awful little tart didn’t even tell me. Presumed! Presumed we’re always open for emigrants. Since last Thursday is all I knew!”
    Which she’d pronounced now and ever would,
Tursdy
.
    “Don’t get cranky, Tim,” she pleaded.
    Old Red Kenna, a little rooster of a man, had begotten eleven children along the lines of Kitty. They were a raucous mob. And very earthy. Were they going to come to the Macleay one by one, the arrival of the next one all the more guaranteed by the success of the last? Australia as famous as New York at Red Kenna’s hearth and in that corner of North Cork. The same story had already happened in another direction with Tim’s own more sedate clan. His eldest sister had gone to Brooklyn and married a newspaper editor—married the
Brooklyn Advocate
, in fact. And so, one by one, two others of his older sisters had crossed the Atlantic on the strength of that founding bit of emigrant luck. One of these follow-the-leader sisters was now a housekeeper to a family of Jewish haberdashers, the other had married a stevedore. He, Tim, had been expected to join his sister in Brooklyn, his important sister, the newspaper editor’s wife. From the age of sixteen he’d always said in public that he would, and yet knew in his water he was lying. In the Cork papers were weekly advertisements saying,
Attractive Terms of Emigration to New South Wales
.
    Of course, no one really understood what distances were involved. You could return from Brooklyn. The emigrant’s return was one of the staple bright hopes of all parties. But who could return from New South Wales?
    The thing was the idea of being on his own, away from the maternal manners of sisters. That interested him more than he could properly utter even to himself. And now, what Brooklyn was to the Sheas, his own little store in Belgrave Street was to Red Kenna’s squat, charming children.
    Kitty said, “You can’t beat Mamie. Went all the way to the Agent-General in the Strand to get a special rate. Imagine!”
    “And we’ll put Mamie on the verandah like Molly?” asked Tim.
    “Out there under a mosquito net while the summer lasts. She should be settled in somewhere by winter. She makes her way, that one. Not at all shy like me!”
    “No room in the inn then for some small people,” murmured Tim.
    Annie was working herself in between the two of them from behind, saying, “Mama, mama.”
    “You’d think those Rochester children had friends and relatives, wouldn’t you?”
    “Well, we surely bloody well do,” said Tim.
    She dug him with her elbow. “Don’t get sullen there, Tim.”
    He flinched. “I saw Hanney’s woman too.”
    “Holy