Ireland -- Emigration and Immigration -- Fiction; Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
She remembered suddenly that she used to wear a blue ribbon when she
went blackberrying among the hills; she found it in an old box and tied
it round her neck. The moment she put it on her memory was as if
lighted up with the memories of the saints and the miracles they had
performed, and she went to Father Maguire to tell him of the miracle.
That the agent should have in stock the very window she had imagined
seemed a miracle, and she was encouraged to think some miraculous thing
had happened when the priest asked her to tell him exactly what her
window was like. She had often told him before but he had never
listened to her. But now he recognised her window as an adaptation of
Fra Angelico's picture, and he told her how the saint had wandered from
monastery to monastery painting pictures on the walls. More he could
not tell her, but he promised to procure a small biography of the
saint. She received the book a few days after, and as she turned over
the leaves she heard the children coming home from school, and she took
the book out to them, for her sight was failing, and they read bits of
it aloud, and she frightened them by dropping on her knees and crying
out that God had been very good to her.
She wandered over the country visiting churches, returning to Kilmore
suddenly. She was seen as usual at sunrise and at sunset feeding her
poultry, and then she went away again, and the next time she was heard
of was in a church near Dublin celebrated for its stained glass. A few
days after Ned Kavanagh met her hurrying up the road from the station,
and she told him she had just received a letter from the Munich agent
saying he had forwarded her window. It was to arrive to-morrow.
It was expected some time about mid-day, but Biddy's patience was
exhausted long before, and she walked a great part of the way to Dublin
to meet the dray. She returned with it, walking with the draymen, but
within three miles of Kilmore she was so tired that they had to put her
on the top of the boxes, and a cheer went up from the villagers when
she was lifted down. She called to the workmen to be careful in
unpacking the glass; and when they were putting it up she went down on
her knees and prayed that no accident might happen.
At sunset the church had to be closed, and it was with difficulty that
she was persuaded to leave it. Next morning at sunrise she was knocking
at the door of the woman who was charged with the cleaning of the
church, asking for the key.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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