Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/313

 Timothy smiled at this with an innocent malice. "You see how 'tis, Father. You cannot kape yourself from belavin' in thim and you a man o' God."

"I do not, Timothy! 'Tis but a way of speech that I learned in my childhood. An' 'tis lucky for you that I have a knowledge of thim, for any other priest would have driven you out of the parish, you and your stubborn pipes that do naught but play faëry music. An' you a man of forty in a trifle of six days, and no wife an' childer to keep you from foolish notions. If ye had, now, you could be livin' in the proper tenant's house for the Wilcox's man, instead of Michael O'Donnell, who has no business livin' up here on the hill so far from his work that he can come home but once a week to look after his poor motherless child. I will say for you, Tim, that you do your duty by that bit of a slip of a girl baby, keepin' her so neat and clean an all, times when Mike's not here."

Timothy did not raise his drooping head at this praise, and something about his attitude struck sharp across the priest's trained observation. The big, shambling, red-headed man looked like a guilty child. There was a moment's silence, while Father Delancey speculated, and then his experienced instinct sped him to the bull's-eye. "Timothy Moran, you're not putting your foolish notions in the head of that innocent child o' God, Moira O'Donnell, are you?"

The red head sank lower.

"Answer me, man! Are ye fillin' her mind with your sidhe and your red-hatted little people an' your stories of 'gentle places' an' the leprechaun?"

Timothy arose suddenly and flung his long arms abroad