'Are you there?' peering round, his face quivering with anger and weakness.
'Yis, Tim, I'm here,' faltered Mary, without stirring.
'Bring me my stick.'
'Ah, no, Tim; no! Sure you never rose yer hand to me yet! And 'tisn't now, when you're all as one as come back from the dead, that'——
'Bring me my stick.'
The stick was brought, and down on her knees beside the big chair flopped the cowering wife.
'Well you know what you desarve. Well you know, you young thief o' the world! that if I was to take and beat you this blessed minute as black as a mourning-coach, 'twould be only sarving you right, after the mean, dirthy, shameful turn you've done me!'
'It would, it would!' sobbed the girl.
'Look here!' gasped Tim, opening his breast and shewing an old tattered shirt. 'Look at them rags! Look at what you dressed up my poor corpse in; shaming me before all the decent neighbours at the wake! An' you knowing as well as I did about the elegant brand-new shirt I'd bought o' purpose for my berrin; a shirt I wouldn't have put on my living back—no, not if I had gone naked in my skin! You knew I had it there in the chest laid up; and you grudged it to my unfortunate carcase when I couldn't spake up for myself!'
'O Tim, darlin', forgive me!' cried Mary. 'Forgive me this once, and on my two knees I promise never, never to do the likes again! I don't know what came over me at all. Sure, I think, the divil—Lord save us!—must have been at my elbow when I went to get out the shirt; tempting me, and whispering that it was a pity and a sin to put good linen like that into the clay. Oh, how could I do it at all?'