Page:Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories (1915).djvu/31

 through the rain all day. I wanted hot tea. I wanted tobacco. I wanted a deep chair in front of a fire.

John Cassidy also wanted something—something from me. Therefore I sighed.

"I'd be glad," he said, "if your reverence would step up and take a look at herself—and maybe say a word to her that would do her good."

Herself was, of course, Mrs. Cassidy. It is in this way that we speak of our wives in the West of Ireland. It is, I think, a beautiful and respectful way of speaking of them. The use of the pronoun in this absolute fashion suggests that for each of us there is no other woman in the world, but only the one; and that is as it should be.

"There's a kind of weakness on her," said John Cassidy; "and it's worse she's getting instead of better."

I grasped at a ray of hope. I am, after all, a clergyman—not a doctor. A weakness is a physical rather than a spiritual malady. I could scarcely be expected to cure her.

"Why don't you get the doctor if she's ill?" I asked.

I was standing in a pool of water, but that made very little difference to me. My boots had been soaked through for hours.

"I had the doctor," said Caasidy. "I had him four times and I paid him twice, and it's very little good he did her."