ells the same story as you do we'll go to your
mother's, and afterwards I'll go to see Lennon about his daughter."

Pat's dancing with Kate and Kate's flight to America had reached
Lennon's ears, and it did not seem at all likely that he would consent
to give his daughter to Pat Connex, unless, indeed, Pat Connex agreed
to take a much smaller dowry than his mother had asked for.

These new negotiations, his packing, a letter to the Bishop, and the
payment of bills fully occupied the last two days, and the priest did
not see Biddy again till he was on his way to the station. She was
walking up and down her poultry-yard, telling her beads, followed by
her poultry; and it was with difficulty that he resisted the impulse to
ask her for a subscription, but the driver said if they stopped they
would miss the train.

"Very well," said the priest, and he drove past her cabin without
speaking to her.

In the bar-rooms of New York, while trying to induce a recalcitrant
loafer to part with a dollar, he remembered that he had not met anyone
so stubborn as Biddy. She had given very little, and yet she seemed to
be curiously mixed up with the building of the church. She was the last
person he saw on his way out, and, a few months later, he was struck by
the fact that she was the first parishioner he saw on his return. As he
was driving home from the station in the early morning whom should he
see but Biddy, telling her beads, followed by her poultry. The scene
was the same except that morning was substituted for evening. This was
the first impression. On looking closer he noticed that she was not
followed by as many Plymouth Rocks as on the last occasion.

"She seems to be going in for Buff Orpingtons," he said to himself.

"It's a fine thing to see you again, and your reverence is looking
well. I hope you've been lucky in America?"

"I have brought home some money anyhow, and the church will be built,
and you will tell your beads under your window one of these days."

"Your reverence is very good to me, and God is very good."

And she stood looking after him, thinking how she had brought him round
to her way of thinking. She had always known that the Americans would
pay for the building, but no one else but herself would be thinking of
putting up a beautiful window that would do honour to God and Kilmore.
And it wasn't her fault if she didn't know a good window from a bad
one, as well as the best of them. And it wasn't she