He grabbed the money, counted it, and gave her back a dreadful look of contempt. Then he lifted his enormous basket, which was, as always, full to the brim, and turned his back on us. This time, we all stood in the front sitting-room window and watched him. He didn’t close our gate, and he scuttled slowly off down the street as though he couldn’t get away from us fast enough.

“First, he thought we were making fun of him,” my mother said, “and now he thinks I was trying to bargain with him. He might have known I’d make it up to him the next time.”

She, who never tried to bargain with anybody in her life, was filled with shame.

“Next week, we’ll have the door open for him before he knocks,” I said.

But the following week there was no sign of the old man, and he never came near us again, although, filled with remorse, we watched for him. One afternoon, my Uncle Matt dropped around to see us, and my mother, in a confiding mood, told him the whole story.

“Well, I could have told you,” he said, grinning.

“It wasn’t so much the apples, you know,” my mother said.

“Oh, no,” said my uncle. “You’d have liked him to come to your door and ask straight out for money, like the rest of your beggars.”

My mother was noted for her inability to refuse food, clothes, or money to anybody who came to the door.

“How many times must I tell you not to call them beggars,” she said angrily now to my uncle. “They’re just unfortunate, and I wouldn’t be so quick to laugh at them if I were you.”

“Well, you’re well rid of him,” my uncle said. “And I may as well tell you now that I saw him strolling down O’Connell Street the other morning wearing a suit of clothes that I couldn’t afford to buy, and not an apple in sight. There’s your poor old man for you.”

“Now how did you know it was him?” my mother cried skeptically. “You never saw him at all.”

“Wasn’t I here the first time he came to the door? I was standing in the middle of the kitchen, and you had the hall door wide open. Of course I saw him.”

“Well, you’re making all that up about seeing him on O’Connell Street.”

“I saw him, and I passed close enough to touch him. He had his married daughter from Drumcondra with him.”

“And how do you know she was his married daughter from Drumcondra, may I ask?”

“Oh, you couldn’t mistake her,” my uncle said airily. “I knew her by the way she was wearing her hat.”

“That tongue of yours, Matt,” my mother said. “I never know whether to believe you or not.”

For my part, I believed every word my uncle said.