"What about ye?" The unmistakable Belfast greeting stopped Mary McAleese in her tracks outside Lisduggan shopping centre in Waterford last night.
Ireland is indeed a small place. The speaker, a young Northern Ireland woman, turned out to have done a postgraduate course in legal studies at the University of Ulster campus in Jordanstown, and the two were soon comparing notes on the lecturers.
The presidential candidate powered her way through three shopping centres, encountering a high degree of recognition from all but the very young and receiving promises of support from all sides.
In Quinnsworth she met a girl whose father was from the Falls Road. At SuperValu a woman in the process of depositing seven large sliced pans on the checkout paused to greet her.
Local Fianna Fail luminaries guided her smoothly among the early evening shoppers. The redoubtable Treas Honan, former Cathaoirleach of the Seanad, ensured that the shy and diffident were brought forward to "press the flesh".
At a press conference in a local hotel, Prof McAleese squarely addressed the reports of a possible voting pact between two of her opponents.
She professed not to be worried about the possibility, but added: "I'd be a little bit perplexed by it though, because I thought at the outset of this process all of the candidates, including myself, had been very strongly committed to the idea of giving the electorate real choice.
"I certainly remain very committed to that. The only pact I want is with the individual voter - to ask them first of all to give me their Number 1, and if they feel they cannot do that, obviously to give me their Number 2 and on down the line. I wouldn't want to do anything that would inhibit voter choice.
"Looking at the issue of pacts, it does seem to me that by asking voters, almost expecting of voters that they would vote in a particular way, that this is an issue of restricting voter choice. But at the end of the day you can't restrict voter choice, can you, really?"
She defended herself against charges of using Mary Robinsonlike phraseology emphasising general concepts such as inclusiveness. "I think that one of the characteristics of Mary Robinson's presidency was the caring outreach that she brought, that she gave to so many community groups, so many people who had felt that they weren't included by anybody, that they were always left out of things, " she said.
"I frankly don't see an awful lot wrong with that language. But I use my own language. I come from a culture of conflict, and I find it hard to understand why anybody would want to use the kind of language of conflict and contempt, of disrespect. All of us have witnessed what that language does, and how it damages communities and how it damages people. I don't know, really, any antidote to that except the language of inclusion."
She was scathing about the early references to the women candidates as Spice Girls. "I think that that level of discussion, that level of ridicule, tends to be sexist, tends to dismiss women. It tends to diminish the seriousness of the role of President." She felt that she had a fairly serious track record "and I think it's entitled to be taken seriously".
She added: "I think that all of us who are applicants for the role of President are entitled to have a serious examination of what we would bring to the role, of what our credentials are, rather than that rather superficial and silly, and maybe even gimmicky, response."
Afterwards, the candidate adjourned to the hotel ballroom to deliver a rallying address to a packed audience of supporters.