“Hold yez tongues!” snapped their brother, “sure a body can’t git in a word edgeways for yez cacklin’. Listen till me, Rosie; did ye not promise Mary, an’ she a-dyin’, that yez wud be Larry’s wife? Answer me that.”
“I didn’t know what I was a-sayin’,” protested Rosie; “I was so took back and frightened!”
“Divil a bit do that alter the case! Ye promised, an’ it howlds good in the soight av God!”
“An’ the blessed can’ls burnin’ in the room!” cried Ellen.
“An’ she jist after bein’ anointed!” added Bridget.
“Will yez howld yes whist!” exclaimed O’Hara, enraged. “Faix, yez tongues do be goin’ from Monday mornin’ till Saturday noight, an’ divil raysave the voice kin be heerd bud yez own!”
“She’s yez own choild, Malachi,” admitted Ellen, as though to wash her hands of the whole affair.
“Talk till her, an’ good luck!” muttered her sister.
“I will iv yez giv me a chance.” And O’Hara once more turned to his sobbing daughter and proceeded with his arguments.
Rosie had been an infant when her mother died, and she had been reared by her two aunts in an atmosphere loaded with superstition and reeking of omens of good and ill. If the wind but stirred of a night among the housetops, Ellen detected the wail of a banshee, and if a lonely dog howled at the moon, Bridget, in hushed tones, announced the presence of death in the street. They crowded the corners of dimly lit rooms with the shadows of those departed, and the very teachings of religion were so distorted as to be made to supply exorcisms against agencies of evil and tokens calculated to render powerless their incantations. The girl was saturated with this; from her childhood she had drawn it in with every breath; and it was taught to her as an article of faith, to disbelieve which was to imperil her salvation. The father was well aware of this. He was far too practical to give heed to such things himself, but he was willing enough that they should help him finger some of old Larry’s hoarded dollars.