When Bartley went home, he communicated to his wife Father Philip's intention of calling on the following day, to hear a correct account of the _Lianhan Shee_.
"Why, thin," said she, "I'm glad of it, for I intinded myself to go to him, any way, to get my new scapular consecrated. How-an'-ever, as he's to come, I'll get a set of gospels for the boys an' girls, an' he can consecrate all when his hand's in. Aroon, Bartley, they say that man's so holy that he can do anything--ay, melt a body off the face o' the earth, like snow off a ditch. Dear me, but the power they have is strange all out!"
"There's no use in gettin' him anything to ate or dhrink," replied Bartley; "he wouldn't take a glass o' whisky once in seven years. Throth, myself thinks he's a little too dhry; sure he might be holy enough, an' yet take a sup of an odd time. There's Father Felix, an' though we all know he's far from bein' so blessed a man as him, yet he has friendship an' neighbourliness in him, an' never refuses a glass in rason."
"But do you know what I was tould about Father Philip, Bartley?"
"I'll tell you that afther I hear it, Mary, my woman; you won't expect me to tell what I don't know?--ha, ha, ha!"
"Behave, Bartley, an' quit your jokin' now, at all evints; keep it till we're talkin' of somethin' else, an' don't let us be committin' sin, maybe, while we're spakin' of what we're spakin' about; but they say it's as thrue as the sun to the dial:--the Lent afore last itself it was,--he never tasted mate or dhrink durin' the whole seven weeks! Oh, you needn't stare! it's well known by thim that has as much sinse as you--no, not so much as you'd carry on the point o' this knittin'-needle. Well, sure the housekeeper an' the two sarvants wondhered--faix, they couldn't do less--an' took it into their heads to watch him closely; an' what do you think--blessed be all the saints above!--what do you think they _seen_?"
"The Goodness above knows; for me--I don't."
"Why, thin, whin he was asleep they seen a small silk thread in his mouth, that came down through the ceilin' from heaven, an' he suckin' it, just as a child would his mother's breast whin the crathur 'ud be asleep: so that was the way he was supported by the angels! An' I remimber myself, though he's a dark, spare, yallow man at all times, yet he never looked half so fat an' rosy as he did the same Lent!"