“It is common sense that I am talking,” Fergus hotly replied. “What with the landlord, Farley McKeown, and the priest, you are all in a nice pickle!”
“The priest, Fergus!”
“Robbing you because he is a servant of the Lord; that is the priest’s trick,” the youth exclaimed. “We are feeding here with the cows and the pigs and we are not one bit better than the animals ourselves. I hate the place; I hate it and everything about it.”
“Sure you don’t hate your own people?” asked Norah, rising from her seat and going timidly up to her brother. “Sure you don’t hate me, Fergus?”
“Hate you?” laughed the young man stroking her hair with an awkward hand. “No one could hate you, because you are a little angel.... Now run away and sit down at the fire and warm yourself.... They are going to make you a nun, they say.”
There was a note of scorn in his voice, and he looked defiantly at his mother as he spoke.
“What better than a nun could she be?” asked the mother.
“I would rather see her a beggar on the rainy roads.”
“What is coming over you atall, Fergus?” asked the old man. “Last night, too, you were strange in your talk on the top of the sea.”
“How much money have you in the house?” Fergus asked, taking no heed of his father’s remark. “Ten shillings will be enough to take me out of the country altogether.”