“If your father that’s dead was alive this day,” he said, “he’d turn you out of the house when he seen you in them clothes.”
Mary Ellen had no recollection of her father, who had died before she was twelve months old, but she was more hopeful about him than Gallagher seemed to be.
“He might not,” she said.
Then Father McCormack appeared, walking briskly up the street from the-presbytery. He was wearing, as Dr. O’Grady had anticipated, a silk hat. He had a very long and voluminous frock coat. He had even, and this marked his sense of the importance of the occasion, made creases down the fronts of his trousers. Gallagher went to meet him.
“Good morning, Thady,” said Father McCormack cheerfully. “We’re in great luck with the weather.”
“Father,” said Gallagher, “you were always one that was heart and soul with the people of Ireland, and it will make you sorry, so it will, sorry and angry, to hear what I have to tell you.”
Father McCormack felt uneasy. He did not know what Gallagher meant to tell him, but he was uncomfortably conscious that the day of the Lord-Lieutenant’s visit might be a highly inconvenient time for proving his devotion to the cause of the people. The worst of devotion to any cause is that it makes demands on the devotee at moments when it is most difficult to fulfil them. Father McCormack tried feebly to put off the evil hour.
“To-morrow, Thady, to-morrow,” he said. “There isn’t time now. It’s half-past eleven, and the Lord-Lieutenant may be here any minute.”
“Begging your reverence’s pardon,” said Gallagher firmly, “but to-morrow will be too late. The insult that is about to be offered to the people of this locality will be offered to-day if a stop’s not put to it.”
“Nonsense, Thady, nonsense, nobody is going to insult us.”