Gibby tried Betty McGrath's first. Yes, Dr. Durie had ordered everybody out except the sick woman, who was tossing on her truckle bed, calling on the Virgin and all the saints in a shrill Galway dialect, and her daughter Bridget, a heavy-featured girl of twenty, who stood disconsolately looking out at the window as if hope had wholly forsaken her heart.
Gibby inquired if the doctor had been there recently.
"Oh, yes," said Bridget; "as ye may see if ye'll be troubled lookin' in the corner. He tore down all thim curtains off the box-bed. It'll break the ould woman's heart, that it will, if ever the craitur gets over this."
At the door Gibby met Father Phil Kavannah, a tall young man with honest peasant's eyes and a humorous mouth.
"You and I, surr, will have to see this through between us," said Father Phil, grasping his hand.
"It is a bad business," responded Gilbert; "I fear it will run through the mills."
"Worse than ye think," said the priest very gravely, "ten times worse—three-fourths of the workers have no relatives here, and there will be no one to nurse them. They've talked lashin's about the new village hospital, and raised all Tipperary about where it is to stand and what it is to cost, but that's all that's done about it yet."
Gilbert whistled a bar of "Annie Laurie," which he kept for emergencies.
"Well," he said slowly, "it will be like serving a Sunday-school picnic with half a loaf and one jar of marmalade—but we'll just need to see how far we can make ourselves go round!"
"Right!" said Father Phil with a wave of his hand as he stood with his fingers on the latch of Betty McGrath's door.