"Don't say that, mother, I am not well rid of her, for there's no other woman in the world for me except her that's gone. Has she gone with Pat Connex?"
"No, he said nothing about that, and it was he who brought the message."
"I've no one, mother, to blame but myself. I was drunk last night, and how could she let a drunken fellow like me into her room."
He went out to the backyard, and his mother heard him crying till it was time for him to go back to work.
V
As he got up to go to work he caught sight of Biddy M'Hale coming up the road; he rushed past her lest she should ask him what he was crying about, and she stood looking after him for a moment, and went into the cabin to inquire what had happened.
"Sure she wouldn't let her husband sleep with her last night," said Mrs. M'Shane, "and you'll be telling the priest that. It will be well he should know it at once."
Biddy would have liked to have heard how the wedding party had met Pat Connex on the road, and what had happened after, but the priest was expecting her, and she did not dare to keep him waiting much longer. But she was not sorry she had been delayed, for the priest only wanted to get her money to mend the walls of the old church, and she thought that her best plan would be to keep him talking about Kate and Peter. He was going to America to-morrow or the day after, and if she could keep her money till then it would be safe.
His front door was open, he was leaning over the green paling that divided his strip of garden from the road, and he looked very cross indeed.
She began at once:—