"I didn't love him, Maggie; that's reason enough." She spoke shortly. Maggie turned again from her work to look down on her in amazement.
"You was always that way, Aileen!" she exclaimed impatiently, "thinkin' nobody but a lord was good enough for you, an' droppin' Luigi as soon as ever you got in with the Van Ostend folks; and as for 'love'—let me give you as good a piece of advice as you'll get between the risin' of a May sun and its settin':—if you see a good man as loves you an' is willin' to marry you, take him, an' don't you leave him the chanct to get cool over it. Ye'll love him fast enough if he's good to you—like my Jim," she added proudly.
"Oh, your Jim! You're always quoting him; he isn't quite perfection even if he is 'your Jim.'"
"An' is it parfection ye're after?" Maggie was apt in any state of excitement to revert in her speech to the vernacular. "'Deed an' ye'll look till the end of yer days an' risk dyin' a downright old maid, if it's parfection ye're after marryin' in a man! An' I don't need a gell as has niver been married to tell me my Jim ain't parfection nayther!"
Maggie resumed her work in a huff; Aileen smiled to herself.
"I didn't mean to say anything against your husband, Maggie; I was only speaking in a general way."
"An' how could ye mane anything against me husband in a gineral or a purticular way? Sure I know he's got a temper; an' what man of anny sinse hasn't, I'd like to know? An' he's not settled-like to work in anny wan place, as I'd like to have him be. But Jim's young; an' a man, he says, can't settle to anny regular work before he's thirty. He says all the purfessional men can't get onto their feet in a business way till they be thirty; an' stone-cuttin', Jim says, is his purfession like as if 't was a lawyer's or a doctor's or a priest's; an' Jim says he loves it. An' there ain't a better worker nor Jim in the sheds, so the boss says; an' if he will querrel between whiles—an' I'm not denyin' he don't—it's sure the other man's fault for doin' something mane; Jim can't stand no maneness. He's a good worker, is Jim, an' a good husband, an' a lovin' father, an' a good provider, an' he don't drink, an' he ain't the slithery kind—if he'd 'a' been that I wouldn't married him."
There was a note of extreme authority in what Maggie in her excitement was giving expression to. Now that Jim McCann was back and at work in the sheds after a seven years absence, it was noted by many, who knew his wife of old, that, in the household, it was now Mrs. McCann who had the right of way. She was evidently full of her subject at the present moment and, carried away by the earnestness of her expressed convictions, she paid no heed to Aileen's non-responsiveness.
"An' I'm that proud that I'm Mrs. James Patrick McCann, wid a good house over me head, an' a good husband to pay rint that'll buy it on the insthalment plan, an' two little gells an' a darlin' baby to fill it, that I be thankin' God whiniver Jim falls to swearin'—an' that's ivery hour in the day; but it's only a habit he can't be broke of, for Father Honoré was after talkin' wid him, an' poor Jim was that put out wid himself, that he forgot an' swore his hardest to the priest that he'd lave off swearin' if only he knew whin he was doin' it! But he had to give up tryin', for he found himself swearin' at the baby he loved him so. An' whin he told Father Honoré the trouble he had wid himself an' the b'y, that darlin' man just smiled an' says:—'McCann, there's other ways of thankin' God for a good home, an' a lovin' wife, and a foine b'y like yours, than tellin' yer beads an' sayin' your prayers.'—He said that, he did; an' I say, I'm thankin' God ivery hour in the day that I've got a good husband to swear, an' a cellar to fill wid fuel an' potaters, an' a baby to put to me breast, an'—an'—it's the same I'm wishin' for you, me dear."
There was a suspicious tremble in Maggie's voice as she turned again to her work.