Father Dan tried to console him. There were thistles in everybody's crop, and after all it was a good thing to have begotten a girl. Girls were the flowers of life, the joy and comfort of man in his earthly pilgrimage, and many a father who bemoaned his fate when a daughter had been born to him, had lived to thank the Lord for her.
All this time the joy bells had been ringing, and now the room began to be illuminated by fitful flashes of variegated light from the firework-frame on the top of Sky Hill, which (as well as it could for the rain that had soaked it) was sputtering out its mocking legend, "God Bless the Happy Heir."
In his soft Irish voice, which was like a river running over smooth stones, Father Dan went on with his comforting.
"Yes, women are the salt of the earth, God bless them, and when I think of what they suffer that the world may go on, that the generations may not fail, I feel as if I want to go down on my knees and kiss the feet of the first woman I meet in the street. What would the world be without women? Think of St. Theresa! Think of the Blessed Margaret Mary! Think of the Holy Virgin herself. . . ."
"Oh, stow this stuff," cried my father, and leaping to his feet, he began to curse and swear.
"Stop that accursed bell! Is the fool going to ring for ever? Put out those damnable lights, too. Put them out. Are the devils of hell trying to laugh at me?"
With that, and an oath at himself for his folly, my father strode out of the room.
My mother had heard him. Through the unceiled timbers of the floor between them the words of his rage had reached her. She was ashamed. She felt as if she were a guilty thing, and with a low cry of pain she turned to the wall and fainted.
The old lord died the same night. Somewhere towards the dead reaches of the dawn his wicked spirit went to its reckoning, and a month afterwards the new Lord Raa, a boy in an Eton jacket, came over to take possession of his inheritance.
But long before that my father, scoring out his disappointment like an account that was closed, had got to work with his advocates, bankers and insular councillors on his great schemes for galvanising the old island into new life.