"The curate, Father Sheehy that did it. Sure our own priest would never have done it, but it was a strange curate from the County Mayo. And I asked him did he know there was such a one as me in the world, and he said he never did. Then yourself'll need forgiveness in heaven, Father, says I, as well as that silly old man."
"Could you not speak quietly to your father about it?" suggested Louise.
"Sure I never see the old man but when I go into the room in the morning to wipe my face with the little towel after washing it, and he don't speak to me himself, but to himself he do be speaking. And the old woman says to me, 'Go down now to your landlord and see what he can do for you;' and I said I will go, for if he was at home, there was never a bishop or a priest or a friar spoke better and honester words to me than his honour's self."
Martin Regan paused to take breath and wipe his mouth with his coat sleeve, and after a moment's abstracted gaze at the vista of tall fir trees before him, burst out again:
"And now it's whisky and tea for the old woman, and trimmings at two shillings the yard for the sister's dress, and what for Martin? what for the boy that worked for them the twelve months long? Me that used to go a mile beyond Cloon every morning to break stones, and to deal for two stone o' meal every Saturday to feed the childer when there was nothing in the field. And it's trying to drive me from the house now they are, and me to wet my own tea and to dress my own bed, and me after wringing my shirt twice, with respects to ye, after working all the day in the potato ridges."
"Could no one influence your stepmother; has she no friends here?" asked Louise, much moved.
Martin Regan laughed bitterly.
"Sure she never belonged to the estate at all," he said, "but came in the middle of the night on me and the little sister sitting by the little fire of bushes, and me with a little white coat on me. And we never knew where she came from, and never brought a penny nor a blanket nor a stitch of clothes with her, and our own mother brought seventy pounds and two feather beds. And now she's stiffer than a woman that would have a hundred pounds. And now the old man's like to die, and maybe he won't pass the night, and where'll I be? Sure if he would keep him living a little longer he might get repentance."
"Had you not better ask the Doctor to see him?" said Louise. "He might bring him round for a time, and then we must do our best for you."