‘’Tis the milk she does be tasting already, the little snaking beast,’ Honor said, pointing to it, as it sat furtively licking its lips close to the hearth.
Grania struck the cat a light tap on the nose with the iron spoon she was stirring the pot with, an insult to which it responded with a vicious spitting mew, and a backward leap, which seemed to set all its orange-coloured coat on edge in a moment.
‘Was it along by the sea-way you were to-day, allanah?’ Honor pursued presently.
‘I was, sister.’
‘Did you pass by the old chapel?’
‘I did, Honor.’
‘Then you said, I’ll be bound, a prayer at the little old cross for me, as I bade you do?’
‘Well, then, Honor, I will not tell you a lie—no, I will not—but I never once thought of it,’ Grania replied penitently. ‘You see, Murdough Blake he was with me, and we got colloguing. But sure, sister asthor, don’t fret, and I’ll go to-morrow by the first streak of day and say as many as ever you tell me, so I will, Honor.’
Honor for answer sighed and lay back against the wooden settle as if some habitual source of trouble was weighing upon her mind.
‘Grania, it is a bad thing for you that there is no priest on Inishmaan, a very bad thing,’ she said, earnestly, an ever-present source of anxiety coming to the front, as it often did when she and Grania were alone. ‘How is a young girsha to learn true things if there is no one in it to teach her? When I lie at night in bed thinking, thinking, I think of you Grania, and I pray to God and the Holy Mother, and to all the tender saints, that it may not be laid against you. Sure how can the child know, I say, and she never taught? The Holy Mother will know how ’twas, and may be when I get there, Grania, she’ll let me say the word, and show that it was no fault of yours, allanah, for how could you know and none here to teach you, only me that knows nothing and less than nothing myself?’