“Let me help with your basket.”
“No, no, jist be aisy there; ye’re not strong enough for that, and faix it’s a sin and a shame that sich a dilicate young crathur should iver be put to the work; home or not, my opinion is ye’re a born lady, and that I’ll stick to agin the world.”
They walked on together, Margaret talking cheerfully, and Catharine mingling some painful thoughts with her gratitude.
“Mary Margaret,” she said, at length, in a low, mournful voice, “you will never turn against me, as the others have, because I cannot give you proof that—that the poor baby they buried away from me was honestly mine; you will take my word for it, I feel almost sure!”
“I don’t want ye’r word; one look in ye’r purty face is enough for me, and I’d stand up for ye agin the whole univarse, with old Ireland to the fore.”
“Thank you—God bless you for that,” answered Catharine, and for the first time in many days a smile broke over her face. “You are so honest and so kind, Margaret, I could not bear that you should think ill of me.”
Margaret did not answer at once, but walked on thoughtfully.
“In course,” she said at last, “I belave ivery word ye tell me; but if it wasn’t so—if ye had been a poor, desaved crathur instid of the swate innicent ye are, I wouldn’t turn, agin ye anyhow. It ain’t Christian, and, accordin’ to my idees, it ain’t modest for a woman to hold a poor, fallen feller crathur down in the gutter foriver and iver. The blissed Saviour, who was holier than us all, didn’t do it, and, by all the holy saints, Mary Margaret Dillon niver will either.”
Catharine drew a deep sigh.
“Don’t sigh in that way, darlint,” exclaimed Margaret, kindly. “D’ye know that ivery time ye draw a deep breath like that it drinks a drop of blood from ye’r heart? Don’t sigh agin, that’s a darlint.”