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about her in the same way when she first came because she would be working in a shop. She firmly closed the door in their faces.

In the morning Mrs. Kehoe knocked on the window as Eilis reached the street from the basement. Mrs. Kehoe beckoned her to wait and then appeared at the front door.

“I was wondering if you would do me a special favour,” she said.

“Of course I would, Mrs. Kehoe,” Eilis said. It was something her mother had taught her to say if anyone asked her to do them a favour.

“Would you take Dolores to the dance in the hall tonight? She’s dying to go.”

Eilis hesitated. She wished she had guessed in advance that she was going to be asked to do this so she could have a reply prepared.

“All right.” She found herself nodding.

“Well, that’s great news. I’ll tell her to be ready,” Mrs. Kehoe said.

Eilis wished she could think of some quick excuse, some reason why she could not go, but she had used a cold the previous week and she knew that she would have to make an appearance at some stage, even if just for a short time.

“I’m not sure how long I’ll be staying,” she said.

“That’s no problem,” Mrs. Kehoe said. “No problem at all. She won’t want to stay that long either.”

Later, after work, when Eilis went upstairs, she found Dolores Grace alone working in the kitchen and made an arrangement to collect her at ten o’clock.

At supper, none of them spoke about the dance in the hall; Eilis presumed from the atmosphere and from the way in which Miss McAdam pursed her lips and seemed openly irritated every time Mrs. Kehoe spoke and from the fact that Dolores remained silent throughout the meal that something had been said. Eilis understood also by the way both Miss McAdam and Diana avoided her eyes that they knew she was taking Dolores to the dance. She hoped they did not believe that she had offered to do so and wondered if she could let them know that she had been press-ganged by Mrs. Kehoe.

Eilis was shocked by Dolores’s appearance when she went upstairs at ten o’clock and found her. She was wearing a cheap leather jacket, like a man’s, and a frilly white blouse and a white skirt and almost black stockings. The red lipstick seemed garish against her freckled face and bright hair. She struck Eilis as looking like a horse-dealer’s wife in Enniscorthy on a fair day. Eilis almost fled downstairs as soon as she saw her. Instead, she had to smile as Dolores said that she would need to go upstairs and fetch her winter coat and a hat. Eilis did not know how she was going to sit beside her in the hall with Miss McAdam and Sheila Heffernan avoiding her on one side and Patty and Diana arriving with all their friends.

“Are there great fellas at this?” Dolores asked when they reached the street.

“I have no idea,” Eilis replied coldly. “I go only because it is organized by Father Flood.”

“Oh, God, does he hang around all night? It’ll be just like home.”

Eilis did not reply and tried to walk in a way that was dignified, as though she were going to eleven o’clock mass in the cathedral in Enniscorthy with Rose. Each time Dolores asked her a question she answered quietly and did not tell her much. It would be better, she thought, if they could walk in silence to the hall, but she could not ignore Dolores completely, although she found that, as they stood waiting for traffic lights to change, she was clenching her fists in pure irritation each time her companion spoke.

She had imagined that, when they were in the hall, Miss McAdam and Sheila Heffernan would sit away from them once they had left their coats in the cloakroom and found a position from which to survey the dancers. But instead their two fellow lodgers moved closer to them, all the more to emphasize that they had no intention of speaking to them or consorting with them in any way. Eilis observed how Dolores let her eyes dart around the hall, her brow knitted in watchfulness.

“God, there’s no one here at all,” she said.

Eilis stared straight in front of her pretending that she had not heard.

“I’d love a fella, would you?” Dolores asked and nudged her. “I wonder what the American fellas are like.”

Eilis looked at her blankly.

“I’d say they’re different,” Dolores added.

Eilis responded by