, every one of them have got ahead of things. I couldn't put
the spirit into _him_ as I could into the littler ones and into the
girls. Well, but he's the only black sheep of the seven, for two of them
died. All that's living but him are doing well, doing well' (she nodded
her head in triumph), 'and their children doing better than them, as
ought to be. Some of them ladies and gentlemen, real quality. Oh! ye
needn't think I don't know the difference' (some thought expressed in
his face had evidently made its way with speed to her brain)--'my
daughter that lives here is all well enough, and her girl handsome and
able to make her way, but I tell you there's some of my grandchildren
that's as much above her in the world as she is above poor Terry
O'Brien--young people that speak soft when they come to see their poor
old grannie and read books, oh! I know the difference; oh! I know very
well--not but what my daughter here is well-to-do, and there's not one
of them all but has a respect for me.' She nodded again triumphantly,
and her eyes flashed. 'They know, they know very well how I set them out
in the world. And they come back for advice to me, old as I am, and see
that I want for nothing. I've been a _good_ mother to them, and a good
mother makes good children and grandchildren too.'

There was another pause in which she breathed hard; the priest grasped
the point of the story; he asked--

'What became of O'Brien?'

'I drowned him.'

The priest stood up in a rigid and clerical attitude.

'I tell ye I drowned him.' She had changed her attitude to suit his; and
with the supreme excitement of telling what she had never told, there
seemed to come to her the power to sit erect. Her eagerness was not that
of self-vindication; it was the feverish exaltation with which old age
glories over bygone achievement.

'I'd never have thought of it if it hadn't been O'Brien himself that put
it into my head. But the children had a dog, 'twas little enough they
had to play with, and the beast was useful in his way too, for he could
mind the baby at times; but he took to ailing--like enough it was from
want of food, and I was for nursing him up a bit and bringing him round,
but O'Brien said that he'd put him into the canal. 'Twas one Sunday that
he was at home sober--for when he was drunk I could handle him so that
he couldn't do much harm. So says I, "And why is he to be put in the
canal?"

'Says he, "Because he's doing no good her