“If she had gone on, she might have got as good as your mother?”
“Oh, hang it! no; I did not say that!”
“I mean, with God teaching her all the time—for ten thousand years, say—and she always doing what he told her!”
“Oh, well! I don’t know anything about that. I don’t know what God had to do with my mother being so good! She was none of your canting sort!”
“There is an old story,” said Donal, “of a man who was the very image of God, and ever so much better than the best of women.”
“He couldn’t have been much of a man then!”
“Were you ever afraid, my lord?”
“Yes, several times—many a time.”
“That man never knew what fear was.”
“By Jove!”