Mark sat down again and thought. The priest had said nothing about the lady of the tree, and Mark really wanted him to mention her; but Father Murray had given him something else that made him thoughtful and brought back memories. Mark did not have long to wait, for the door opened in five minutes and the priest came out alone.
"Mrs. O'Leary came to arrange for the funeral herself--brave, wasn't it?" he said. "I left her with Ann, my housekeeper, a good soul whose specialty is one in which the Irish excel--sympathy. Ann keeps it in stock and, though she is eternally drawing on it, the stock never diminishes. Mrs. O'Leary's troubles are even now growing less."
"Sympathy and loyalty," said Mark, "are chief virtues of the Irish I knew at home."
"Ann has both," said Father Murray, hunting for his pipe. "But the latter to an embarrassing degree. She would even run the parish if she could, to see that it was run to save me labor. Ann has been a priest's housekeeper for twenty-five years. She has condoled with hundreds; she loves the poor but has no patience with shams. We have a chronic sick man here who is her particular bête noir. And, as for organists, she would cheerfully drown them all. But Mrs. O'Leary is safe with Ann."
"Poor woman!" said Mark.
"That reminds me," said Father Murray. "I had a convert priest here a little while ago. His Bishop had sent him for his initial 'breaking in' to one of the poorest parishes in a great city. I questioned a little the advisability of doing that; so, after six months, when I met the priest--who, by the way, had been a fashionable minister like myself--I asked him rather anxiously how he liked his people. 'Charming people,' he answered, 'charming. Charming women, too--Mrs. O'Rourke, Mrs. Sweeney, Mrs. Thomasefski--' 'You speak of them,' I said, 'as if they were society ladies.' 'Better--better still,' he answered. 'They're the real thing--fewer faults, more faith, more devotion.' I tell you, Mr. Griffin, I never before met people such as these."
"Mrs. O'Leary seems to have her pastor's philosophy," ventured the visitor.
"Philosophy! That would seem a compliment indeed to Mrs. O'Leary. She wouldn't understand it, but she would recognize it as something fine. It isn't philosophy, though," he added, slowly; "rather, it's something bigger. It's real religion."
"She needs it!"
"So do we all need it. I never knew how much until I was so old that I had to weep for the barren years that might have bloomed." The priest sighed as he hunted for his pipe.