"As God's me judge, Marse Prendergast, I haven't e'er a penny in the house. I'm in debt in Garradrimna this blessed minute, and that's as sure as you're there!"
"Go on out of that with your talk of debts, and you to be sending your son John through his college courses before all our eyes like any fine lady in the land. And think of all the grand money you'll be getting bye and bye in rolls and cartloads!"
"Aye, with the help of God!"
Even in the moment of her torment Mrs. Brennan could not restrain her vanity of her son.
"And to think of all that being before you now and still you keep up your mean refusals of the little thing I ask," said the old woman with the pertinacious unreasonableness of age.
"I haven't got the money, Marse, God knows I haven't."
"God knows nothing, Nan Byrne, only your shocking villainy. And 'tis the great sin for you surely. And if God knows this, it is for some one else to know your sin. It is for your son John to know the kind of a mother that he loves and honors."
Mrs. Brennan had heard this threat on many an occasion yet even now the repetition of it made her grow suddenly pale.... An expression of sickliness was upon her face seen even through the shadowed sewing-room. Always this thought had haunted her that some time John might come to know.
"Long threatening comes at last!" was a phrase that had always held for her the darkest meaning. She could never listen to any woman make use of it without shuddering violently. Marse Prendergast had threatened so often and often.