Father Healy prophesied good
things of Tim.

Mrs. Maggie Gorman was housekeeper at the presbytery, a woman whose sour
face concealed a kindly heart. She and Dan were for ever disputing, yet
each held the other in profound respect. Let anyone traduce Mrs. Gorman,
and Dan was bristling all over like an indignant porcupine. Say one word
disrespectful of Dan before Mrs. Gorman, and you might wish that one
word unspoken. Molly Healy, the priest's sister, declared that they
quarrelled, yet loved, one another, as if they had been sister and
brother.

Molly Healy herself spent a large part of her life in a struggle for
precedence with Mrs. Gorman. But the housekeeper contrived to hold her
position of authority.

"A child like you," she remarked, "to be troubling herself with the
grocer and butcher! When you are as old as myself, I shall let you have
your own way all the time."

To this Molly acquiesced of necessity; there was no appeal to her
brother.

"Now, peace! peace!" he would say. "I am here to look after the souls of
the parish, and you must not trouble me about the affairs of the flesh.
Let Mrs. Gorman take care of the meat, since it pleases her. If you
don't, she will be poisoning us."

Molly Healy was a notability in Grey Town. Saving the school children,
no one called her any other title but "Molly," or "Molly Healy." If a
friend had chanced to do so, it would have caused Molly bitter pain, for
she was a kindly soul. Plain, yet not unpleasing, she had a
superabundance of bright Irish humour, and a quickness of repartee that
amused all, but offended none.

"It's only Molly Healy," people were accustomed to say, "and she's the
sweetest, kindest creature, that wouldn't hurt a fly, of intention."

When she first came to Grey Town the girl had been desperately
home-sick, and many the longing glance she had cast at the ocean,
wishing that it might carry her back to dear old Ireland. But now she
was content to live in the bright, friendly land that was so kindly a
foster-mother to her. And there were a multitude of duties, mostly
self-imposed, to keep her mind and body busy.

In the presbytery grounds there was a veritable menagerie of animal
pensioners dependent on her--two dogs, three cats, with a numerous
progeny of kittens; a cockatoo and magpie, marvellously gifted in slang;
two seagulls, kept for the benefit of the snails that infested the
garden; an aviary of small, brightly-coloured birds; and, lastly, a