The Real Charlotte. 65 



mingled horribly with their professional apparatus, and, 

 outside in the road, the filthy children played among 

 puddles that stagnated under an iridescent scum of soap- 

 suds. A narrow strip of goose-nibbled grass divided the 

 road from the lake shore^ and at almost any hour of the day 

 there might be seen a slatternly woman or two kneeling by 

 the water's edge, pounding the wet linen on a rock with a flat 

 wooden weapon, according to the immemorial custom of 

 their savage class. 



The Row ended at the ferry pier, and perhaps one reason 

 for the absence of self-respect in the appearance of its in- 

 habitants lay in the fact that the only passers-by were the 

 country people on their way to the ferry, which here, where 

 the lake narrowed to something less than a mile, was the 

 route to the Lismoyle market generally used by the dwellers 

 on the opposite side. The coming of a donkey-cart down 

 the Row was an event to be celebrated with hooting and 

 stone-throwing by the children, and, therefore, it can be 

 understood that when, on a certain still, sleepy afternoon 

 Miss Mullen drove slowly in her phaeton along the line of 

 houses, she created nearly as great a sensation as she would 

 have made in Piccadilly. 



Miss Mullen had one or two sources of income which few 

 people knew of, and about which, with all her loud candour, 

 she did not enlighten even her most intimate friends. Even 

 Mr. Lambert might have been surprised to know that two 

 or three householders in Ferry Row paid rent to her, and 

 that others of them had money deahngs with her of a 

 complicated kind, not easy to describe, but simple enough 

 to the strong financial intellect of his predecessor's daughter. 

 No account books were taken with her on these occasions. 

 She and her clients were equally equipped with the abso- 

 lutely accurate business memory of the Irish peasant, a 

 memory that in few cases survives education, but, where it 

 exists, may be relied upon more than all the generations of 

 ledgers and account books. 



Charlotte's visits to Ferry Row were usually made on 

 foot, and were of long duration, but her business on this 

 afternoon was of a trivial character, consisting merely in 

 leaving a parcel at the house of Dinny Lydon, the tailor, 

 and of convincing her washerwoman of iniquity in a manner 



