"Often?" I asked.
"Well—I saw it—one Sunday, anyway," answered Ally, with the air of one who had never been anywhere else all his life.
"What was it like, Ally dear?" asked the mother.
"Like heaven, mother, if the angels had only been there."
"Angels!" said I contemptuously. "Pretty place to find angels, in Mike Maloney's shanty! Why, it's like a stable."
Again Ally's eyes went up to the ceiling, and, while his fingers nervously played an invisible organ on the coverlet, he began to sing, so plaintively and sadly that it quite unmanned me:
"He came down to earth from heaven,
Who is God and Lord of all,
And his shelter was a stable,
And his cradle was a stall.
With the poor, and mean, and lowly,
Lived on earth our Saviour holy."
The widow and I stood watching and listening long after he had ceased singing. In a few moments a lucid interval occurred, and, noticing me, he said:
"Doctor, why can't we have Mass in our church? Oh! wouldn't I like to play the organ for it always till I died!"