ttle
Willie's coat, or maybe nursing the baby when it's down with the
measles, the Lord is as pleased with her, I'm thinking, as with some of
your nun bodies in their grand blue cloaks taking turn and turn to kneel
before the tabernacle."

There was another rumble of apologetic voices after that (both Father
Dan's and the Reverend Mother's), and then came Christian Ann's clear
notes again, breaking fast, though, and sometimes threatening to stop.

"What's that you're saying, ma'am? . . . Motherhood a sacred and holy
state also? 'Deed it is, ma'am! That's truth enough too, though some
ones who shut themselves up in convents don't seem to think so. . . . A
mother's a mother, and what's more, her child is her child, wedlock or
no wedlock. And if she's doing right by her little one, and bringing it
up well, and teaching it true, I don't know that when her time comes the
Lord will be asking her which side of her wedding-day it was born
on. . . .

"As for Mary O'Neill, ma'am, when you're talking and talking about her
saving her soul, you're forgetting she has her child to save too, ma'am.
God gave her the _boght villish_, and is she to run away from it? It's a
fine blessing would be on her for that, isn't it? . . . Father Dan, I'm
surprised at you--such a terrible, cruel, shocking, unnatural thing as
you're thinking. I thought you were a better man than that--I really
did. . . . And as for some ones that call themselves Mothers, they're no
mothers at all and never will be--tempting a poor woman in her trouble
to leave her child to be a charge on other people. . . ."

Still another rumble of soft voices and then--

"Not that I'm thinking of myself, ma'am. Dear heart, no! It's only too
eager I'd be to have the lil angel to myself. There she is on the
hearthrug, ma'am, and if anything happens to Mary O'Neill, it's there
she'll be for the rest of _my_ life, and it's sorry I am for the
darling's sake that my time cannot be longer. . . .

"But Mary O'Neill isn't for leaving her little one to go into any
convent. 'Deed no, ma'am! There would be no rest on her if she did. I'm
a mother myself and I know what she'd be feeling. You might put the
black hood on her head, but Nature's a wonderful powerful thing, and
she'd never go to bed at night or get up in the morning without thinking
of her baby. 'Where's she now?' she'd be asking herself. 'What's
happening to my motherless child?' she'd be saying. And as the years
went on she'd