Livres pour Tout

Chapter 78

gentleman left some money to buy candles for poor English, and with
Mr. Fitzgerald took himself away.

"Near midnight, the tall black figure of solemn-faced Father
Flaherty stalked in. He was not pleased with the McCartys, but went
to the side of the dying child, fondled her little wasted hand in
his own, and whispered a prayer for her soul. Never shall I forget
how innocently she looked in his face while he parted the little
ringlets that curled over her brow, and told her she would soon have
a better home in a better world. Then he turned to poor English, and
the cross, and the candles, and the pictures, and the living faces
that gave such a ghastliness to the picture. Mrs. McCarty brought
him a basin of water, over which he muttered, and made it holy. Then
he again muttered some unintelligible sentences, and sprinkled the
water over the dying child, over the body of poor English, and over
the living-warning Mrs. McCarty and her daughters, as he pointed to
the coffin. Then he knelt down, and they all knelt down, and he
prayed for the soul of poor English, and left. What holy water then
was left, Mrs. McCarty placed near the door, to keep the ghosts out.

"The neighbors at the Blazers took a look in, and a few friends at
the house of the 'Nine Nations' took a look in, and 'Fighting Mary,'
of Murderer's Alley, took a look in, and before Father Flaherty had
got well out of 'Cow Bay,' it got to be thought a trifle of a wake
would console Mrs. McCarty's distracted feelings. 'Hard-fisted Sall'
came to take a last look at poor English; and she said she would
spend her last shilling over poor English, and having one, it would
get a drop, and a drop dropped into the right place would do Mrs.
McCarty a deal of good.

"And Mrs. McCarty agreed that it wouldn't be amiss, and putting with
Sall's shilling the money that was to get the candles, I was sent to
the 'Bottomless Pit' at the house of the 'Nine Nations,' where Mr.
Crown had a score with the old woman, and fetched away a quart of