“And do you flatther yoursilf, Mrs. Fergus O’Mahony, that the head of our house is blowing smoke down through the chimney for _you?_” she asked. “Sure, if he was, thin, ’twould be a lamint-able waste of breath. Wan puff from a short poipe would serve to captivate _you!_” Cormac O’Daly made haste to bury his nose in his glass. Long acquaintance with the attitude of the convent toward the marital tendencies of Mrs. Fergus had taught him wisdom. It was safe to sympathize with either side of the long-standing dispute when the other side was unrepresented. But when the nuns and Mrs. Fergus discussed it together, he sagaciously held his peace. “Is it sour grapes you’re tasting, Agnes O’Mahony?” put in Mrs. Fergus, briskly. In new matters, hers could not be described as an alert mind. But in this venerable quarrel she knew by heart every retort, innuendo and affront which could be used as weapons, and every weak point in the other’s armor. “Sour grapes! _me!_” exclaimed the mother-superior, with as lively an effect of indignation as if this rejoinder had not been flung in her face every month or so for the past dozen years. “D’ye harken to that, Sister Blanaid and Sister Ann! It’s _me_, after me wan-and-fifty years of life in religion, that has this ojus imputation put on me! Whisht now! don’t demane yourselves by replyin’! We’ll lave her to the condimnation of her own conscience.” The two nuns had made no sign of breaking their silence before this admonition came, and they gazed now at the peat fire placidly. But the angered mother-superior ostentatiously took up her beads, and began whispering to herself, as if her thoughts were already millions of miles away from her antagonist with the crimped hair and the vacuous smile. “It’s persecuting me she’s been these long years back,” Mrs. Fergus said to the company at large, but never taking her eyes from the mother-superior’s flushed face; “and all because I married me poor desaysed husband, instead of taking me vows under her.” “Ah, that poor desaysed husband!” Mother Agnes put in, with an ironical drawl in the words. “Sure, whin he was aloive, me ears were just worn out with listening to complaints about him! Ah, thin! ’Tis whin we’re dead that we’re appreciated!” “All because I married,” pursued Mrs. Fergus, doggedly, “and wouldn’t come and lock mesilf up here, like a toad in the turf, and lave me brothers free to spind the money in riot and luxurious livin’. May be, if God’s will had putt a squint on me, or given me shoulders a twist like Danny at the fair, or otherwise disfigured me faytures, I’d have been glad to take vows. Mortial plainness is a great injucement to religion.” The two nuns scuffled their feet on the stone floor and scowled at the fire. Mother Agnes put down her beads, and threw a martyr-like glance upward at the blackened oak roof.