and I could generally catch anything
that was said in the room below (through the open timbers of the
unceiled floor), the soft voice of the Reverend Mother never reached me,
and the Irish roll of Father Dan's vowels only rumbled up like the sound
of a drum.

But Christian Ann's words came sharp and clear as the crack of a
breaker, sometimes trembling with indignation, sometimes quivering with
emotion, and at last thickening into sobs.

"Begging your pardon, ma'am, may I ask what is that you're saying to the
Father about Mary O'Neill? . . . Going back to Rome is she? To the
convent, eh? . . . No, ma'am, that she never will! Not if I know her,
ma'am. Not for any purpose in the world, ma'am. . . . Temptation, you
say? You know best, ma'am, but I don't call it overcoming
temptation--going into hidlands to get out of the way of it. . . . Yes,
I'm a Christian woman and a good Catholic too, please the Saints, but
asking your pardon, ma'am, I'm not thinking too much of your convents,
or believing the women inside of them are living such very unselfish
lives either, ma'am."

Another soft rumble as of a drum, and then--

"No, ma'am, no, that's truth enough, ma'am. I've never been a nun
myself, having had better work to do in the world, ma'am. But it's all
as one--I know what's going on in the convents, I'm thinking. . . .
Harmony and peace, you say? Yes, and jealousy and envy sometimes, too,
or you wouldn't be women like the rest of us, ma'am. . . . As for Mary
O'Neill, _she_ has something better to do too, I'm thinking. . . . After
doing wrong, is she? Maybe she is, the _boght millish_, maybe we all
are, ma'am, and have need of God's mercy and forgiveness. But I never
heard that praying is the only kind of penance He asks of us, ma'am. And
if it is, I wouldn't trust but there are poor women who are praying as
well when they're working over their wash-tubs as some ones when they're
saying their rosaries and singing their Tantum Ergos. . . ."

Another interruption and then--"There's Bella Kinnish herself who keeps
the corner shop, ma'am. Her husband was lost at the 'mackerel' two years
for Easter. He left her with three little children and a baby unborn,
and Bella's finding it middling hard to get a taste of butcher's meat,
or even a bit of loaf-bread itself for them, ma'am. And when she's
sitting late at night, as the doctor's telling me, and all the rest of
the village dark, darning little Liza's stockings, and patching li