A Dozen Ways Of Love

denly changed their surface and become a chain of miniature riv

e kilted up his long black petticoats and hopped and skipped at a good pace. The hard problems of life had not as yet assailed

were tipped with red buds and some were grey. The March wind was surging through them; the March clouds were flying above them,-light grey clouds with no rain in them,-veil above veil of mist, and each filmy web travelling at a differ

would come to this Jordan with his ma

nscientiously. He had been sent on an errand, and had to ret

casements were shining with varnish; cheap starched curtains decked every window. When the priest had rung a bell which jingled inside, the door was opened by a young woman. She was not a servant, her dress was fur-below

r in his hand and referred to

oung woman, looking at something w

an, made itself heard. 'Louisy, if it's a Cath'lic priest, t

oom which stood open to shew the frills on the pillows, into a room in the back wing. She opened the door with a jerk and stared again as the priest

ge bed with patchwork quilt stood in a corner; in the middle was an iron stove in which logs crackled and sparkled. The air was hot and dry, but the priest, being a

face and hands, by every line of the bowed figure, was strength. One brown toil-worn hand held the head of a thick walking-stick which she rested on the floor well in front of her, as if she were about to rise and walk forward. Her brown face-nose and chin strongly defined-was stretched fo

d, 'You're young,' she said, peering into his face. Without a moment's intermission further orders were given him: 'Be seated;

the stove. It was not at all his idea of a priestly visit to a woman who had represented herself as d

saying that as the priests of this pa

hustled her soul into the m

let one of ye know a thing concerning that marriage that I've never told to mortal soul. Sit ye still and keep your feet t

eyebrows with intelligence as he glanced at a Bib

he might not have picked up more than the main facts of all she said. As it was, his attention wandered for some minutes from the words that came from her palsied lips. It did not wander from her; he was thinking who she might be, and whether she was really

ok at the priest with bleared yet flashing eyes, was pouring out words whose articulation was often indistinct. Her hand upon her staff was constantly moving, as if she w

tention returne

e in a new place respectable, and get up a bit in the world? Oh, yes! but Father Maloney he was on the look-out for a wife for Terry O'Brien. He was a widow man with five little helpless things, and drunk most of the time was Terry, and with no spirit in him to do better. Oh! but what did that matter to Father Maloney when it was the good of the Church he was looking for, wanting O'Brien's family looke

ut bringing them up for the Church. Did he come in and wash them when I was a-bed? Did he put clothes on their backs? No, and fine and angry he was when I told him that that was what he ought to have done! Oh! but Father Mal

ore I came to them. Likely young ones they were too, and handsome, what would they have done if I hadn't been there to put the

Did you ever try to cut water with a knife, or to hurt a feather-bed by striking at it with your fist? A nice good-natured man was Terry O'Brien-I'll never say that he

them the bit and sup they had, for I went out to work; but how could I save anything to fit decent clothes on them, and it wasn't much work I could do, what with the babies always coming, and sick and ailing they were half the time. The Sisters would come from the convent to give me charity. 'Twas prec

the staff was swaying to and fro beneath the tremulous hand. She had poured out her words so quickly that there was in hi

f getting up and getting up, having a shop maybe, or sending their children to the "Model" School to learn to be teachers, or ge

d I knew, too, that I'd do a kinder thing for each child I had, to strangle it at it's birth than t

rom the ledge in front of the fire and changed his easy

spiritiness he'd have been a wickeder man, for what is there to give a man sense in a rearing like that? If he'd been a wickeder man I'd have had more fear to do with him the thing I did. But he was just a good sort of

n them, as ought to be. Some of them ladies and gentlemen, real quality. Oh! ye needn't think I don't know the difference' (some thought expressed in his face had evidently made its way with speed to her brain)-'my daughter that lives here is all well enough, and her girl handsome and able to make her way, but I tell you there's some of my grandchildren that's as much above her in the world as she is above poor Terry O'Brien-young people that speak soft when they come to see th

he breathed hard; the priest grasp

came of

owned

up in a rigid and

lling what she had never told, there seemed to come to her the power to sit erect. Her eagerness was not t

way too, for he could mind the baby at times; but he took to ailing-like enough it was from want of food, and I was for nursing him up a bit and bringing him round, but O'Brien said that he'd

ause he's doin

e poor beast live,

e does taking the children's me

ent creature into the next world?" for the dog ha

it of his own, "And if he's an innocent

ne his sins, like the

er he's put where he can

there is to-day, for it was the same season of the year, and the children all cried; and thinks I to myself, "If it was the dog that

up to the sky and I said to God and the holy saints that for Terry O'Brien and his children 'twas the best deed I could d

ut where anything had happened to break it the edges were melting into large holes. And the next nigh

ng, but there were places where if you went off the road you fell in, and there were placards up saying to take care. But Terry O'Brien hadn't the sen

d to have him about me, and I missed him like, and I said in my heart, "Terry, wherever ye may be, I have done the best deed for you and your children, for if you were innocent you have gone to a better place, and if it were sin to live as you did, the less of it you have

e best deed I could do for him and his. I broke with the Cath'lic Church long ago, for I couldn't go to confess; and many's the year that I never thought of religion. But now that I am going to d

n demanded some strong form of speech. 'Woman

eemed to be let loose upon her again. Her words came more thickly, her gaunt frame tre

, "in order that the new country may be filled with Cath'lics," and I thought before I died I'd just let ye know how one such marr

which has graven them is that sympathy which accepts as its own the sorrows of others. Father M'Leod had come far because he had a word to say, a word of pity and of sympathy, wh

other who answered the door; her face, which spoke of ord

what statement it was that your mother commu

ir, I

her usual health and sound m

d, sir,' and s

see your mother

g easy now, but she knows no one, and the docto

man sigh

me what business it was my mother had wit

should tell you,' he re