t it; you're always here and you have given less than any one else."

"Didn't I offer your reverence a sovereign once since I gave you the
five pounds?"

"You don't seem to understand, Biddy, that you can't put up your window
until the plastering is finished."

"I think I understand that well enough, but the church will be
finished."

"How will it be finished? When will it be finished?"

She did not answer, and nothing was heard in the still church but her
irritating little cough.

"You're very obstinate. Well, tell me where you would like to have your
window."

"It is there I shall be kneeling, and if you will let me put my window
there I shall see it when I look up from my beads. I should like to see
the Virgin and I should like to see St. John with her. And don't you
think, your reverence, we might have St. Joseph as well. Our Lord would
have to be in the Virgin's arms, and I think, your reverence, I would
like Our Lord coming down to judge us, and I should like to have Him on
His throne on the day of Judgment up at the top of the window."

"I can see you've been thinking a good deal about this window," the
priest said.

She began again and the priest heard the names of the different saints
she would like to see in stained glass, and he let her prattle on. But
his temper boiled up suddenly and he said:--

"You'd go on like this till midnight if I let you. Now, Biddy M'Hale,
you've been here all the morning delaying my workmen. Go home to your
fowls."

And she ran away shrinking like a dog, and the priest walked up and
down the unfinished church. "She tries my temper more than anyone I
ever met," he said to himself. At that moment he heard some loose
boards clanking, and thinking it was the old woman coming back he
looked round, his eyes flaming. But the intruder was a short and
square-set man, of the type that one sees in Germany, and he introduced
himself as an agent of a firm of stained glass manufacturers. He told
Father Maguire they had heard in Germany of the beautiful church he was
building. "I met an old woman on the road, and she told me that I would
find you in the church considering the best place for the window she
was going to put up. She looks very poor."

"She's not as poor as she looks; she's been saving money all her life
for this window. Her window is her one idea, and, like people of one
idea, she's apt to become a little tiresome."

"I don't quite understand."

He began telling t