The priest took his departure; the grave was filled up and the crowd began to disperse.
“Come away home now,” said Sheila Carrol to Norah, who was still kneeling on the wet ground. The girl rose without a word, brushed her dress with a woollen handkerchief and accompanied the beansho from the churchyard.
“Don’t cry, Norah,” said Sheila, observing that tears were still falling down the cheeks of her companion. “Everyone must die and go away just the same as if they had never been at all, for that is the will of God. How is yer mother this morning?”
“Much the same as she was always,” said Norah. “She cannot get rid of her cough, and she has shiverin’ fits of late.... Hasn’t the sea the black heart?”
“Black enough, indeed, my child,” said the beansho. “Your mother will feel it a big lot?”
“Not so much,” said the girl. “She’ll soon be with him, she’s thinkin’.”
“At the wake I heard her say that she would be the last of the family to die. What put that into her head?”
“I don’t know what put it into her head, but if I were to die on the wet road this very minute I wouldn’t care one haet.” On Norah’s face there was a look of infinite sadness, and the pathos of her words cut Sheila to the heart.
“Don’t speak like that, Norah Ryan,” she exclaimed. “Death is black and bitter, but there are things much worse than death, things far, far worse.”
They had now reached a stile, and far in front the soft caishin (path) wound on by rock and rath across the broad expanse of moor. Several people, walking one after another, were in front; the soft ooze was squirting under their feet and splashing against their ankles. In the midst of the heather a young bullock lay chewing the cud, and looked upon the passers-by with that stupid, involved look peculiar to the ox; a moor-cock, agitated and voluble, rose into the air and chattered as it swept across the brown of the moor.