“Then wisha, my daughter, think what a good thing it will be for the child.  She will be one of the children of the Infant Jesus first, then a child of Mary, and then of the Sacred heart itself.  And then remember, Rome!  The holy city!  The city of the Holy Father!  Why, who knows, she may even see himself some day!”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said my mother, and then turning with her melting eyes to me she said: 

“Would my Mary like to go—­leaving her mamma but coming home in the holidays—­would she?”

I was going to say I would not, because mamma could not possibly get on without me, but before I could reply Aunt Bridget, with her bunch of keys at her waist, came jingling into the room, and catching my mother’s last words, said, in her harsh, high-pitched voice.

“Isabel!  You astonish me!  To defer to the will of a child!  Such a child too!  So stubborn and spoiled and self-willed!  If we say it is good for her to go she must go!”

I could feel through my mother’s arm, which was still about my waist, that she was trembling from head to foot, but at first she did not speak and Aunt Bridget, in her peremptory way, went on: 

“We say it is good for you, too, Isabel, if she is not to hasten your death by preying on your nerves and causing you to break more blood vessels.  So we are consulting your welfare as well as the girl’s in sending her away.”

My mother’s timid soul could bear no more.  I think it must have been the only moment of anger her gentle spirit ever knew, but, gathering all her strength, she turned upon Aunt Bridget in ungovernable excitement.

“Bridget,” she said, “you are doing nothing of the kind.  You know you are not.  You are only trying to separate me from my child and my child from me.  When you came to my house I thought you would be kinder to my child than a anybody else, but you have not been, you have been cruel to her, and shut your heart against her, and while I have been helpless here, and in bed, you have never shown her one moment of love and kindness.  No, you have no feeling except for your own, and it never occurs to you that having brought your own child into my house you are trying to turn my child out of it.”

“So that’s how you look at it, is it?” said Aunt Bridget, with a flash of her cold grey eyes.  “I thought I came to this house—­your house as you call it—­only out of the best intentions, just to spare you trouble when you were ill and unable, to attend to your duties as a wife.  But because I correct your child when she is wilful and sly and wicked. . . .”

“Correct your own child, Bridget O’Neill!” cried my mother, “and leave mine to me.  She’s all I have and it isn’t long I shall have her.  You know quite well how much she has cost me, and that I haven’t had a very happy married life, but instead of helping me with her father. . . .”

“Say no more,” said Aunt Bridget, “we don’t want you to hurt yourself again, and to allow this ill-conditioned child to be the cause of another hemorrhage.”