"No, ma'am, no, that's truth enough, ma'am. I've never been a nun
myself, having had better work to do in the world, ma'am. But it's all
as one--I know what's going on in the convents, I'm thinking. . . .
Harmony and peace, you say? Yes, and jealousy and envy sometimes, too,
or you wouldn't be women like the rest of us, ma'am. . . . As for Mary
O'Neill, _she_ has something better to do too, I'm thinking. . . . After
doing wrong, is she? Maybe she is, the _boght millish_, maybe we all
are, ma'am, and have need of God's mercy and forgiveness. But I never
heard that praying is the only kind of penance He asks of us, ma'am. And
if it is, I wouldn't trust but there are poor women who are praying as
well when they're working over their wash-tubs as some ones when they're
saying their rosaries and singing their Tantum Ergos. . . ."
Another interruption and then--"There's Bella Kinnish herself who keeps
the corner shop, ma'am. Her husband was lost at the 'mackerel' two years
for Easter. He left her with three little children and a baby unborn,
and Bella's finding it middling hard to get a taste of butcher's meat,
or even a bit of loaf-bread itself for them, ma'am. And when she's
sitting late at night, as the doctor's telling me, and all the rest of
the village dark, darning little Liza's stockings, and patching little
Willie's coat, or maybe nursing the baby when it's down with the
measles, the Lord is as pleased with her, I'm thinking, as with some of
your nun bodies in their grand blue cloaks taking turn and turn to kneel
before the tabernacle."
There was another rumble of apologetic voices after that (both Father
Dan's and the Reverend Mother's), and then came Christian Ann's clear
notes again, breaking fast, though, and sometimes threatening to stop.
"What's that you're saying, ma'am? . . . Motherhood a sacred and holy
state also? 'Deed it is, ma'am! That's truth enough too, though some
ones who shut themselves up in convents don't seem to think so. . . . A
mother's a mother, and what's more, her child is her child, wedlock or
no wedlock. And if she's doing right by her little one, and bringing it
up well, and teaching it true, I don't know that when her time comes the
Lord will be asking her which side of her wedding-day it was born
on. . . .
"As for Mary O'Neill, ma'am, when you're talking and talking about her
saving her soul, you're forgetting she has her child to save too, ma'am.
God gave her the _boght villish_, and is she to run away from it? It's a
fine blessing would be on her for that, isn't it? . . . Father Dan, I'm
surprised at you--such a terrible, cruel, shocking, unnatural thing as
you're thinking. I thought you were a better man than that--I really
did. . . . And as for some ones that call themselves Mothers, they're no
mothers at all and never will be--tempting a poor woman in her trouble
to leave her child to be a charge on other people. . . ."