“Sour grapes! me!” exclaimed the mother-superior, with as lively an effect of indignation as if this rejoinder had not been flung in her face every month or so for the past dozen years. “D’ye harken to that, Sister Blanaid and Sister Ann! It’s me, after me wan-and-fifty years of life in religion, that has this ojus imputation put on me! Whisht now! don’t demane yourselves by replyin’! We’ll lave her to the condimnation of her own conscience.”
The two nuns had made no sign of breaking their silence before this admonition came, and they gazed now at the peat fire placidly. But the angered mother-superior ostentatiously took up her beads, and began whispering to herself, as if her thoughts were already millions of miles away from her antagonist with the crimped hair and the vacuous smile.
“It’s persecuting me she’s been these long years back,” Mrs. Fergus said to the company at large, but never taking her eyes from the mother-superior’s flushed face; “and all because I married me poor desaysed husband, instead of taking me vows under her.”
“Ah, that poor desaysed husband!” Mother Agnes put in, with an ironical drawl in the words. “Sure, whin he was aloive, me ears were just worn out with listening to complaints about him! Ah, thin! ’Tis whin we’re dead that we’re appreciated!”
“All because I married,” pursued Mrs. Fergus, doggedly, “and wouldn’t come and lock mesilf up here, like a toad in the turf, and lave me brothers free to spind the money in riot and luxurious livin’. May be, if God’s will had putt a squint on me, or given me shoulders a twist like Danny at the fair, or otherwise disfigured me faytures, I’d have been glad to take vows. Mortial plainness is a great injucement to religion.”
The two nuns scuffled their feet on the stone floor and scowled at the fire. Mother Agnes put down her beads, and threw a martyr-like glance upward at the blackened oak roof.
“Praise be to the saints,” she said, solemnly, “that denied us the snare of mere beauty without sinse, or piety, or respect for old age, or humility, or politeness, or gratitude, or—”
“Very well, thin, Agnes O’Mahony,” broke in Mrs. Fergus, promptly. “If ye’ve that opinion of me, it’s not becomin’ that I should lave me daughter wid ye anny longer. I’ll take her meself to Kenmare next week—the ride over the mountains will do me nervous system a power o’ good—and there she’ll learn to be a lady.”
Cormac O’Daly lifted his head and set down his glass. He knew perfectly well that with this familiar threat the dispute always came to an end. Indeed, all the parties to the recent contention now of their own accord looked at him, and resettled themselves in their seats, as if to notify him that his turn had come round again.
“I’m far from denying,” he said, as if there had been no interruption at all, “that our O’Mahony is possessed of qualities which commind him to the vulgar multichude. It’s thrue that he rejewced rints all over the estate, and made turbary rights and the carrigeens as free as wather, and yet more than recouped himself by opening the copper mines beyant Ardmahon, and laysing thim to a company for a foine royalty. It’s thrue he’s the first O’Mahony for manny a gineration who’s paid expinses, let alone putting money by in the bank.”