* * * * *
"Is Father Mahon at home?" he asked, as he halted a mile from his own
house in the village, where stood the little tin church, not a hundred
yards from its elder alienated sister, to which he and Maggie went on
Sundays.
The housekeeper turned from her vegetable-gathering beyond the
fence, and told him yes. He dismounted, hitched the reins round the
gatepost, and went in.
Ah! what an antipathetic little room this was in which he waited while
the priest was being fetched from upstairs!
Over the mantelpiece hung a large oleograph of Leo XIII, in cope and
tiara, blessing with upraised hand and that eternal, wide-lipped
smile; a couple of jars stood beneath filled with dyed grasses; a
briar pipe, redolent and foul, lay between them. The rest of the room
was in the same key: a bright Brussels carpet, pale and worn by the
door, covered the floor; cheap lace curtains were pinned across the
windows; and over the littered table a painted deal bookshelf held a
dozen volumes, devotional, moral, and dogmatic theology; and by the
side of that an illuminated address framed in gilt, and so on.
Laurie looked at it all in dumb dismay.
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