The Fire-Woman shook her head. "Did ye ever hear he could?"
"No," admitted Zillah.
"Thrue for you, mum. Divil a wurrd wud I say aginst your Priesht—wan's as good as another, maybe, for ivery-day use; but whin it comes to throuble and heart-scaldin', I pity the poor craythurs who can't put up a candle to the blessed saints—an' so I do. Niver a bhoy o' mine has crassed the ocean without the Virgin havin' her candle."
"And did they arrive safe?"
"They did so; ivery mother's son av 'em."
IX
The more the distracted mother pondered over this sensational suggestion, the more it tugged at her. Science and Judaism had failed her: perhaps this unknown power, this heathen Pope, had indeed mastery over things diabolical. Perhaps the strange religion he professed had verily a saving efficacy denied to her own. Why should she not go to Rome?
True, the journey loomed before her as fearfully as a Polar Expedition to an ordinary mortal. Germany she had been prepared to set out for: it lay on the great route of Jewish migration westwards. But Rome? She did not even know where it was. But her new skill in reading would, she felt, help her through the perils. She would be able to make out the names of the railway stations, if the train waited long enough.
But with the cunning of the distracted she did not betray her heretical ferment.
"P—o—p—e, Pope," she spelt out of her infants' primer in Brum's hearing. "Pope? What's that, Brum?"