"Well, then," said Father Owen, "it will be time enough to begin to cry on the 31st of July, Winifred my child; and you have a whole month before then."
Winifred brightened visibly at this; for a month is very long to a child.
"Meantime you will take your kind friend here, this good lady, to see the sights. She must know Wicklow well, at any rate; so that you can talk about it away over there in America. I wish I were going myself to see all the fine churches and schools and institutions that they tell me are there."
"You have never been in America, Father?" I inquired.
"Nor ever will, I'm afraid. My old bones are too stiff for traveling."
"They're not too stiff, though, to climb the mountain in all weathers," I put in. For the landlord had told me how Father Owen, in the stormiest nights of winter and at any hour, would set out, staff in hand. He would climb almost inaccessible heights, where a few straggling families had their cabins, to administer the sick or give consolation in the houses of death.
"And why wouldn't I climb?" he inquired. "Like my friend the robin, I have my work to do; and the worse for me if some of my flock are perched high up. 'Tis the worse for them, too."
I could not but laugh at the drollery of his expression.
"My purse is none of the longest either," he said, "and wouldn't reach near as far as America; and, besides, I'm better at home where my duty is."