"Well, Hannah," said Father Letheby enthusiastically, "I will. You have made me a confirmed teetotaler. I would not even think of punch when your fragrant coffee is before me." "Wisha, then, sir, but there's more life in the little drop of sperrits. However, your reverence is welcome to whatever you like in this house." This is not the first time Hannah has assumed a tone of proprietorship in my little establishment. Well, no matter. It is our Irish communism,--very like that of the Apostles, too. "You must not be disheartened about that," I said. "I read some time ago that no less a person than Lord Dufferin declared that, although he had taken a degree in Greek, he could not read a line of it in after years till he had learned it all over again, and in his own way." "I am delighted to hear that," said Father Letheby. "And when you do master your Greek," I said, "use your knowledge where it will profit you most." He waited. "On the Greek Fathers. Believe me, there is more poetry, science, philosophy, and theology there than in all modern literature, since Shakespeare. We don't know it. The Anglican divines do. I suspect that many a fairly sculptured sermon and learned treatise was cut from these quarries." I suppose the poor fellow was weary from all the lecturing. Indeed, I think too his mind had rather a practical cast; for he began to ply me with questions about the parish that fairly astonished me. "Did Pat Herlihy's big boy make his First Communion? What about establishing a First Confession class? He heard there was a night-dance at the cross-roads, half-ways to Moydore. Why don't the Moydore priests stop it? Did I know Winifred Lane, a semi-imbecile up in the mountains? He did not like one of the teachers. He thought him disrespectful. What was the cause of the coolness between the Learys and the Sheas? Was it the way that one of the Sheas, about sixty years ago, served on a jury, at which some disreputable Leary was convicted? What about a bridge over that mountain torrent at Slieveogue? He had written to the surveyor. Did I think the nuns in Galway would take a postulant? He heard that there was a sister home from New Zealand who was taking out young girls--" "My dear young friend," I said, when I had tried to answer imperfectly this catechism, "I know you are a saint, and therefore endowed with the privilege of bilocation; but I did not know that you could dictate to six amanuenses at the same time, like Cæsar or Suarez." "Oh, by the way," he said, putting up his note-book, "I was near forgetting. With your permission, sir, I intend to put up a little crib at Christmas. Now, the roof is leaking badly over St. Joseph's Chapel. If you allow me, I shall put Jem Deady on the roof. He says you know him well, and can recommend him, and there are a few pounds in my hands from the Living Rosary."