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And they walked through the bog, James talking to the priest all the way, for it was seldom he had anyone to talk to. "Now I must not take you any further from your digging." "Sure there's time enough," said James, "amn't I there all day." "I'll go and see Mike Mulhare myself," said the priest. "Long life to your reverence." "And I will try to get you the price of the pig."
One morning the priest's housekeeper mentioned as she gathered up the breakfast things, that Mike Mulhare had refused to let his daughter Catherine marry James Murdoch until he had earned the price of a pig. "This is bad news," said the priest, and he laid down the newspaper. "And he waited for her all the summer! Wasn't it in February last that he came out of the poor-house?
"The call I received was too distinct and too clear for me to hesitate." "Tell me about this call." Father MacTurnan told the Bishop that the poor man had come out of the work-house because he wanted to be married, and that Mike Mulhare would not give him his daughter until he had earned the price of a pig.
But no matter, he would hear about his letter some other time. He was bringing happiness to two poor people, and he could not persuade himself to delay their happiness by one minute. He was not bringing one pig, but two pigs, and now Mike Mulhare would have to give him Norah and a calf; and the priest remembered that James Murdoch had said, "What a fine house this will be to rear them in."
There were many who thought that human beings and animals should not live together; but after all, what did it matter if they were happy? And the priest forgot his letter to Rome in the thought of the happiness he was bringing to two poor people. He could not see Norah Mulhare that night; but he drove down to the famine road, and he and the driver called till they awoke James Murdoch.
Once a woman is wake she must go to America." "It must have been a great shock to the priest." "Faith it was, sir, to meet an unbaptised child on the roadside, and the child the only bastard that was ever born in the parish, so Tom Mulhare says, and he's the oldest man in the county of Mayo." "It was altogether a very queer idea, this playhouse."
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