"Oh!" cried Martha, "the bastes. Why couldn't they have come forward with their great hearts when his trouble was heavy upon him, when a word of belief would have strengthened him for what he had to go through?"
She wept. She raved. She talked pure Irish, and there was no one present who could understand her, and there were only seven people in Ireland who could have understood.
"Please!" said Miss Joy to the messenger, "God bless you, and go away."
He went slowly, his fingers inching their way continually around the battered circumference of the straw hat. He drove off, after a while, as one in a trance. The last thing that would have occurred to him was that his good-hearted impulse had made a rich man of him.
"We must find him," said Miss Joy, "and tell him—at once. You must find him. It's your duty and your privilege. He must hear the good news from you."
But Martha shook her head, and talked through her apron which she had thrown over it. When sense began to mingle with her words she pulled down this flag of distress, and showed a face red with emotion and tears.
"Full well I know his heart," she said. "'Tis an open book to me."
Then she laughed aloud.
"'Tis better than an open book, for I read like a snail and cannot write at all.... 'Tis you must bear him the glad tidings—you alone—with your bright hair the color of the old sideboards in the dining-room. Take the front page of a newspaper and run to him. 'Tis for you to do."
There was a wonderful light in Miss Joy's eyes. Martha mocked it: "Yea,'" said she, "'Tho' we sang as angels in her ear, she would not hear!' Be off!"