“Fiends? Ha, ha! Well, well, hurry up with my breakfast or supper, whichever you choose to call it; then get the scissors and cut off my hair.”
“Let me bathe your poor eye first,” she answered; “then, after you have done eating, ’twill be daylight, and I want you, love, to come to Mass this morning, and to see the priest; we’ll go together. O Michael! dark clouds are lowering over us; come with me to the priest.”
“To the priest? No, indeed!
The Black-eye Club have nothing to do with priests.”
“O husband! do not talk so; save yourself before it is too late,” she went on, as she sponged the clotted blood off his cheek.
“I can’t, wife. The craving for spirits is too strong. It all comes, I know, from that one little drink Christmas morning. Now I’m not master of myself; I believe there’s a devil in me.”
A long, shadowy silence followed, during which Helen wept, while ever and anon Roony would say, “It’s no use crying.” While he was at his breakfast she once more begged him to go with her to Mass. But again he refused, saying, “Our club don’t go to Mass; nor must you, until you have trimmed my hair.”
“Why, ’tis short enough,” replied Helen.
“Is it? Look!” And as Mike spoke he clutched a fistful of it, then gave a pull. “Now, don’t you see that some chap might grab me and get my head in ‘chancery’? I want my hair short as pig’s bristles, and well greased too; then I’ll be like an eel, and grab me who can.”
The wife obeyed without a murmur, performing the operation to his entire satisfaction; after which, approaching the crib where her children were sleeping, she gave each a soft kiss, then went off by herself to church.