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."