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SHIANA
would give them! We would have peace then for a time."
"You would have a large sheaf!" said the nurse.
Sheila.—Dear me, Peg, didn't he remember the bribe?
Peg.—What bribe, Sheila dear?
Sheila.—The bribe he consented to take for the widow's house that time when he was going to evict her, and she had not the rent, until Shiana gave it to her.
Peg.—I don't know, Sheila. People often have a bad memory for a thing which they do not wish to keep in mind.
Sheila.—He ought to have been ashamed.
Peg.—It is people without shame that can most easily do what suits them.
Sheila.—Perhaps so. But I do not admire them, those people without shame. It would have become him far better to have kept silent, and not to have been doing the "white cat's abstinence" about dishonesty.
Abbie.—He was just like that man in Killarney who was going into the fight. He had a big thick nose, just as Cormac had. People used to call him Bachall[1] on account of the nose. His father called out to him just as he was entering the fight: "Donald, my boy," said the father, "make haste and call some fellow Bachall before anyone shall have had time to call you so." That was the way with Cormac. He thought the best way in which he could escape the reproach of dishonesty was by calling some one else a thief.
Sheila.—Indeed, Peg, that would not save him.
- ↑ baċall, a knob; esp. the knob on the top of a stick.
