SIXTY-SECOND CHAPTER
The door of the Presbytery was opened by Father Dan's Irish housekeeper, a good old soul whose attitude to her master was that of a "moithered" mother to a wilful child.
All the way up the narrow staircase to his room, she grumbled about his reverence. Unless he was sickening for the scarlet fever she didn't know in her seven sinses what was a-matter with him these days. He was as white as a ghost, and as thin as a shadder, and no wonder neither, for he didn't eat enough to keep body and soul together.
Yesterday itself she had cooked him a chicken as good as I could get at the Big House; "done to a turn, too, with a nice bit of Irish bacon on top, and a bowl of praties biled in their jackets and a basin of beautiful new buttermilk;" but no, never a taste nor a sup did he take of it.
"It's just timpting Providence his reverence is, and it'll be glory to God if you'll tell him so."
"What's that you're saying about his reverence, Mrs. Cassidy?" cried Father Dan from the upper landing.
"I'm saying you're destroying yourself with your fasting and praying and your midnight calls at mountain cabins, and never a ha'porth of anything in your stomach to do it on."
"Whisht then, Mrs. Cassidy, it's tay-time, isn't it? So just step back to your kitchen and put on your kittle, and bring up two of your best china cups and saucers, and a nice piece of buttered toast, not forgetting a thimbleful of something neat, and then it's the mighty proud woman ye'll be entoirely to be waiting for once on the first lady in the island. . . . Come in, my daughter, come in."
He was laughing as he let loose his Irish tongue, but I could see that his housekeeper had not been wrong and that he looked worn and troubled.
As soon as he had taken me into his cosy study and put me to sit in the big chair before the peat and wood fire, I would have begun on my errand, but not a word would he hear until the tea had come up and I had taken a cup of it.