Kathleen recognised that she was the unnecessary third, but they protested that she must walk home with them, and managed to ignore her presence entirely as they followed the dusty road to "Layton."
CHAPTER XIII.
DENIS REFUSES TO SPEAK.
Martin, the postman, was the most deliberate man in Grey Town. He never hurried, and he never made a mistake. If he had twenty letters to deliver at the same address, he would carefully read the address of each one before taking the responsibility of handing it over to the recipient. This accounted for the fact that Martin, the postman, was invariably late.
To Molly Healy, anxiously waiting at the Presbytery gate for the weekly letter from Ireland, Martin was a constantly recurring cause of sin. So keenly did she resent his leisurely methods that her indignation had changed to anger, her anger almost to hatred, when she resolved to check herself.
"It must be stopped," she remarked to Mrs. Quirk, "or one day I will be running at him with the pitchfork, and it would never do for the priest's sister to be pursuing the postman through the town to destroy him."
"Sure, then, if I was you I would be praying for the man, returning good for the evil he was doing you," said Mrs. Quirk.
"But he doesn't mean it, and that is the worst of Martin. His conscience is so big that it takes him all his time to carry it round. He's a poor, good man, but it is murder I sometimes contemplate," cried Molly.