‘You’ve listened to what I’ve told you, Father Moran, and you say that you understand what I feel, but I don’t think you really do, or else you wouldn’t fancy that I could be satisfied to stay here. What is it you ask of me? To spend my time fishing and talking Irish and dancing jigs. Ah! it’s well enough I’d like to do it. Don’t think that such a life wouldn’t be pleasant to me. It would be too pleasant. That’s what’s the matter with it. It’s a temptation, and not a duty, that you’re setting before me.’
‘Maybe it is now--maybe it is. And if it’s that way you think of it, you’re right enough to say no to me. But for all that I understand you well enough. Who’s this now coming up to the house to see me?’ He went over to the window and looked out. ‘Isn’t it a queer life a priest lives in a place like this, with never a minute of quiet peace from morning to night but somebody will be coming interrupting and destroying it? First it’s you, Hyacinth Conneally--not that I grudge the time to you when you’re going off so soon--and now it’s Michael Kavanagh. Indeed, he’s a decent man too, like yourself. Come in, Michael--come in. Don’t be standing there pulling at the old door-bell. You know as well as myself it’s broken these two years. It’s heartbroken the thing is ever since that congested engineer put up the electric bell for me, and little use that was, seeing that Biddy O’Halloran--that’s my housekeeper, Mr. Conneally; you remember her--poured a jug of hot water into its inside the way it wouldn’t annoy her with ringing so loud. And why the noise of it vexed her I couldn’t say, for she’s as deaf as a post every time I speak to her. Ah, you’re there, Michael, are you? Now, what do you want?’
A young farmer, black-haired, tall and straight, stood in the doorway with his hat in his hand. He had brought a paper for Father Moran’s signature. It related to a bull which the Congested Districts Board proposed to lend to the parish, and of which Kavanagh had been chosen to be custodian. A long conversation followed, conducted in Irish. The newly-erected habitation for the animal was discussed; then the best method of bringing him home from Clifden Station; then the kind of beast he was likely to turn out to be, and the suitability of particular breeds of cattle to the coarse, brine-soaked land of Carrowkeel. Kavanagh related a fearful tale of a lot of ‘foreign’ fowls which had been planted in the neighbourhood by the Board. They were particularly nice to look at, and settings of their eggs were eagerly booked long beforehand. Then one by one they sickened and died. Some people thought they died out of spite, being angered at the way they had been treated in the train. Kavanagh himself did not think so badly of them. He was of opinion that their spirits were desolated in them with the way the rain came through the roof of their house, and that their feet got sore with walking on the unaccustomed sea-sand. However their death was to be explained, he hoped that the bull would turn out to be hardier. Father Moran, on his part, hoped that the roof of the bull’s house would turn out to be sounder. In the end the paper was signed, and Kavanagh departed.