"Now, Biddy M'Hale, don't you be going." But Biddy pretended not
to hear him.
"Will I be running after her," said Pat, "and bringing her back?"
"No, let her go. If she doesn't want to help to make the walls
safe I'm not going to go on my knees to her. ... You'll all have
to walk to Father Stafford's to hear Mass. Have you heard your
mother say what she's going to give towards the new church, Pat
Connex?"
"I think she said, your reverence, she was going to send you ten
pounds."
"That's very good of her," and this proof that a public and
religious spirit was not yet dead in his parish softened the
priest's temper, and, thinking to please him and perhaps escape a
scolding, Pat began to calculate how much Biddy had saved.
"She must be worth, I'm thinking, close on one hundred pounds to-
day." As the priest did not answer, he said, "I wouldn't be
surprised if she was worth another fifty."
"Hardly as much as that," said the priest.
"Hadn't her aunt the house we're living in before mother came to
Kilmore, and they used to have the house full of lodgers all the
summer. It's true that her aunt didn't pay her any wages, but when
she died she left her a hundred pounds, and she has been making
money ever since."
This allusion to Biddy's poultry reminded the priest that he had
once asked Biddy what had put the idea of a poultry farm into her
head, and she had told him that when she was taking up the
lodgers' meals at her aunt's she used to have to stop and lean
against the banisters, so heavy were the trays.
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