“She’s here, Father. Pray you, come in.”
The priest stepped inside, and sat down on a bench. For those times, the house was comfortable, and it was very clean. The young woman disappeared, and presently a pair of heavy boots came clattering down the stairs, and Father Thomas felt pretty sure that the sweet Filomena herself stood before him.
“Now then, what do you want?” quoth she, in a tone which did not sound as if she were delighted to see her visitor.
“My daughter, I am a priest,” said Father Thomas gently; “and I am come to see thee for thy good.”
“I’ve got eyes!” snapped Filomena. “Can’t I see you’re a priest? What’s the good of such as you? Fat, lazy fellows that lives on the best o’ the land, wrung out of the hard earnings o’ the poor, and never does a stroke o’ work theirselves, but sits a-twirling o’ their thumbs all day long. That’s what you are—the whole boiling of you! Get you out o’ my house, or I’ll help you!”
And Filomena took up a formidable-looking mop which stood in the corner, as if to let the priest clearly understand the sort of help which she proposed to give him. She had tried this style of reception when the Vicar took the liberty of calling on her some months before, with the result that the appalled gentleman in question never ventured to renew his visit, and told the anecdote with many shakes of the head over “that she-bear up at the smithy.” She understood how to deal with a man of the Vicar’s stamp, and she mistakenly fancied that all priests were of his sort. Sadly too many of them were such lazy, careless, self-indulgent men, who, having just done as much work as served to prevent the Bishop or their consciences (when they kept any) from becoming troublesome, let all the rest go, and thought their duty done. But Father Thomas, as the Vicar had said, was cut from another kind of stuff. Very sensitive to rudeness or unkindness, his feelings were not permitted to override his duty of perseverance: and while he dearly loved peace, he was not ready to buy it at the cost of something more valuable than itself. While he might be slow to see his duty, yet once seen, it would not escape him again.
The personal taunts which Filomena had launched at him he simply put aside as not worth an answer. They did not apply to him. He was neither fat nor lazy: and if Filomena were so ignorant as to fancy that the clergy were paid out of the earnings of the poor, what did it matter, when he knew they were not? He went straight to the root of the thing. His words were gentle enough, but his tone was one of authority.
“Daughter, what an unhappy woman thou art!”
Filomena’s fingers slowly unclosed from the mop, which fell back into the corner. Father Thomas said no more: he merely kept his eyes upon her. His calm dignity took effect at last. Her angry eyes fell before his unchanged look. She was not accustomed to hear her abuse answered in this manner.
“I just am!” she muttered with intense bitterness.