In her different way Christian Ann had arrived at the same conclusion. Long before the thought came to me she had conceived the idea that Father Dan and the Reverend Mother were conspiring to carry me off, and in her dear sweet womanly jealousy (not to speak of higher and nobler instincts) she had resented this intensely.
For four days she had smothered her wrath, only revealing it to baby in half-articulate interviews over the cradle ("We're no women for these nun bodies, going about the house like ghosts, are we, villish?"), but on the fifth day it burst into the fiercest flame and the gentle old thing flung out at everybody.
That was the morning of the departure of the Reverend Mother, who, after saying good-bye to me in my bedroom, had just returned to the parlour-kitchen, where Father Dan was waiting to take her to the railway station.
What provoked Christian Ann's outburst I never rightly knew, for though the door to the staircase was open, and I could generally catch anything that was said in the room below (through the open timbers of the unceiled floor), the soft voice of the Reverend Mother never reached me, and the Irish roll of Father Dan's vowels only rumbled up like the sound of a drum.
But Christian Ann's words came sharp and clear as the crack of a breaker, sometimes trembling with indignation, sometimes quivering with emotion, and at last thickening into sobs.
"Begging your pardon, ma'am, may I ask what is that you're saying to the Father about Mary O'Neill? . . . Going back to Rome is she? To the convent, eh? . . . No, ma'am, that she never will! Not if I know her, ma'am. Not for any purpose in the world, ma'am. . . . Temptation, you say? You know best, ma'am, but I don't call it overcoming temptation—going into hidlands to get out of the way of it. . . . Yes, I'm a Christian woman and a good Catholic too, please the Saints, but asking your pardon, ma'am, I'm not thinking too much of your convents, or believing the women inside of them are living such very unselfish lives either, ma'am."
Another soft rumble as of a drum, and then—
"No, ma'am, no, that's truth enough, ma'am. I've never been a nun myself, having had better work to do in the world, ma'am. But it's all as one—I know what's going on in the convents, I'm thinking. . . . Harmony and peace, you say? Yes, and jealousy and envy sometimes, too, or you wouldn't be women like the rest of us, ma'am. . . . As for Mary O'Neill, she has something better to do too, I'm thinking. . . . After doing wrong, is she? Maybe she is, the boght millish, maybe we all are, ma'am, and have need of God's mercy and forgiveness. But I never heard that praying is the only kind of penance He asks of us, ma'am. And if it is, I wouldn't trust but there are poor women who are praying as well when they're working over their wash-tubs as some ones when they're saying their rosaries and singing their Tantum Ergos. . . ."
Another interruption and then—"There's Bella Kinnish herself who keeps the corner shop, ma'am. Her husband was lost at the 'mackerel' two years for Easter. He left her with three little children and a baby unborn, and Bella's finding it middling hard to get a taste of butcher's meat, or even a bit of loaf-bread itself for them, ma'am. And when she's sitting late at night, as the doctor's telling me, and all the rest of the village dark, darning little Liza's stockings, and patching little Willie's coat, or maybe nursing the baby when it's down with the measles, the Lord is as pleased with her, I'm thinking, as with some of your nun bodies in their grand blue cloaks taking turn and turn to kneel before the tabernacle."
There was another rumble of apologetic voices after that (both Father Dan's and the Reverend Mother's), and then came Christian Ann's clear notes again, breaking fast, though, and sometimes threatening to stop.