"But I could not think of jeopardizing them while I'd be doing for the families or the sons of the stranger."
"But sure, sir, I'll pay you at any rate of interest you like if only you could see your way to give me this help. Enough to buy a bicycle that'll take him over to Ballinamult every day and your grand recommendation to the priests that'll be worth gold. I'll pay you every penny I can, and sure the poor boy will repay you everything when he comes into the position that's due to him."
"Well, I don't know. I don't think the missus—"
At this very moment Mrs. Williams came into the parlor where Rebecca sat with them, and beamed upon her sons.
"Oh, my poor boys, sure it is killed you are with the terrible strain of the study. Sure it is what you'd better go out into the fields now with the pony; but mind, be careful! You poor little fellows!"
Michael Joseph and Paddy at once snatched up their caps and rushed for the door. So much for the extent of their training and Rebecca's control of them, for this was a daily happening. But another part of her hour of torture at the gombeen-man's house had yet to come. Of late Mrs. Williams had made of her a kind of confidante in the small concerns of her household. She was the sort of woman who must needs be always talking to some one of her affairs. Now she enlarged upon the immediate story of how Mrs. Brennan had been begging and craving of Tommy to do something for her son John, who had been sent home from the place he was in England. "The cheek of her, mind you, that Mrs. Brennan!" emphasized Mrs. Williams.
If it had been any other schoolmistress or girl of any kind at all that Mrs. Williams had ever known, they would have acquiesced in this statement of denunciation and said: "That's a sure fact for you, ma'am!" or "Just so!" But this had never been Rebecca's way. She merely said: "John Brennan is a very nice young fellow!"
Although Mrs. Williams was surprised, she merely said: "Is that so? Sure I know very little about him only to see him pass the door. They say he's taken the fashion of tippling a bit, and it's to McDermott's he does go, d'ye mind, with Ulick Shannon, and not to this house. But, of course, it's my bold Ulick that's spending. Easy for him, begad, and it not his own."
Rebecca saw the dirty meanness that stirred in this speech.