'Where's the child, Mrs. Egan?'
The group began talking suddenly, trying to make plain to him what had happened.
'Now, if you all talk together, I shall never understand.'
'Will you leave off pushing me?' said one.
'Wasn't it I that saw Patsy? Will your reverence listen to me?' said Mrs. Egan. 'It was just as I was telling your reverence, if they'd be letting me alone. Your reverence had only just turned in the chapel gate when Mrs. Rean ran from behind the hedge, and, getting in front of me who was going to the chapel with the baby in me arms, she said: "Now I'll be damned if I'll have that child christened a Catholic!" and didn't she snatch the child and run away, taking a short-cut across the fields to the minister's.'
'Patsy Kivel has gone after her, and he'll catch up on her, surely, and she with six ditches forninst her.'
'If he doesn't itself, maybe the minister isn't there, and then she'll be bet.'
'All I'm hopin' is that the poor child won't come to any harm between them; but isn't she a fearful terrible woman, and may the curse of the Son of God be on her for stealin' away a poor child the like of that!'
'I'd cut the livers out of the likes of them.'
'Now will you mind what you're sayin', and the priest listenin' to you?'