Mrs Bannister realized the truth, as soon as she came out of the front door. In Cloncraig, they were already preparing to be pleased with themselves.

Maybe, from one particular angle, they had a right to be, she thought as she began to say goodbye to those nearest to her: the girl, shamefully treated, had been recalled to their conscience, and now they were going to be quit of her, and the relief was largely of their own making. Mrs Bannister knew very well how they had all gone to work on her: how nearly everyone in the village, one way or another, had chipped in, from Father Haggerty praying for guidance and talking about miracles wrought by faith, to old Neil Fairlie asking, was it true they had machines in America for putting new eyes into people … Paddy Finane, one evening, had even become sentimental, saying she must be sorry to leave Cloncraig, and wouldn’t she like to take a little bit of it with her? She had had to think twice about that one …

Oh yes, they had given her the full treatment all right, flattering her as the new-style magician, the American wonder-worker, the only one able to wave the wand and produce the pumpkin. But she had not disliked the process, because she had half made up her mind already.

A voice in the crowd called: “God bless you, ma’am,” and others took it up.

Not God, thought Mrs Bannister, pulling on her driving gloves: this didn’t need God or good luck – it needed pity, and then plain American drive and common sense … From the very beginning, everything about Esther’s case had shocked her, impelling her to action there and then: it was not only the girl’s appalling appearance, it was the whole set-up – the fecklessness, the defeated parents, the indolent cloud that had settled on all concerned, the blind eye of Cloncraig. If this was Ireland, then by God it needed the smartest kick in the pants!

That sort of feebleness and futility wouldn’t do for America; and she was now an American, and must demonstrate the new standard in her own person.

The fact that she was herself, by birth, a daughter of this very village of Cloncraig, made it doubly necessary to prove that the local do-nothing disease was no one’s fault but their own.

Anyone could take a good sharp tug, and start setting themselves and the world to rights … In her own case, nothing stood in the way: she had money, she was free of all ties, she had no children to worry about: why then shouldn’t she do what she could to help, why shouldn’t she take the girl to America and see if the doctors or the clinics could do something for her? It would be a nuisance, and a very big responsibility, and it might not work; but she had nothing better to do, anyway.

The mixed motives seemed to rise up about her, prompting and supporting her as she stood on the threshold. She saw them as separate sentences, a frieze of reasons clicking into place again as they had done many times during the past three weeks. They were like the bedroom texts of her childhood – reassuring, admonitory, half-trusted, half-despised.