“Saver above, is it possible! without cloak or bonnet, shoe or stockin’—­an’ you have your affliction at home, too, poor thing; why the Lord look down an you, an’ pity you I pray his blessed name this day!  Stop, I must warm you a drink of brave new milk, and that’ll help to put the cowld out of your heart—­sit round here, from the breath of that back door—­I’ll have it ready for you in a jiffey; throth will I, an’ you’ll see it’ll warm you and do you good.”

“God help me,” exclaimed the woman, “I’ll take the drink, bekase I wouldn’t refuse your kind heart; but it’s not meat, nor drink, nor cowld, nor storm, that’s throublin’ me—­I could bear all that, and many a time did—­but then I had him! but now who’s to comfort us—­who are we to look to—­who is to be our friend?  Oh, in the wide world—­but God is good!”—­said she, checking herself from a pious apprehension that she was not sufficiently submissive to his will, “God is good—­but still it’s hard to think of losing him.”

“Well, you won’t lose him, I hope,” said the good creature, stirring the new milk with a spoon, and tasting it to ascertain if it was warm enough—­“Of coorse it’s your husband you—­whitch! whitch!—­the divil be off you for a skillet, I’ve a’most scalded myself wid you—­it’s so thin that it has a thing boilin’ before you could say Jack Robinson.  Here now, achora, try it, an’ take care it’s not a trifle too hot—­it’ll comfort you, anyhow.”

It is in a country like Ireland, where there is so much of that close and wasting poverty which constitutes absolute misery, that these beautiful gushes of pure and tender humanity are to be found, which spring in the obscurity of life out of the natural goodness and untutored piety of the Irish heart.  It is these virtues, unseen and unknown, as they generally are, except by the humble individuals on whom they are exerted—­that so often light up by their radiance the darkness and destitution of the cold and lowly cabin, and that gives an unconscious sense of cheerfulness under great privations, which those who do not know the people often attribute to other and more discreditable causes.

While the poor woman in question was drinking the warm milk—­the very best restorative by the way which she could get—­for poverty is mostly forced to find out its own humble comforts—­Father Roche entered the kitchen, buttoned up and prepared for the journey.  On looking at her he seemed startled by the scantiness of her dress on such a morning—­and when she rose up at his entrance and dropped him a curtesy, exclaiming, “God save you, Father!”—­at the same time swallowing down the remainder of the milk that she might not lose a moment; he cast his eye round the kitchen to see whether she had actually come in the dress she wore.

“How far have you come this morning, my poor woman?” he inquired.

“From the ride of the Sliebeen More Mountains, plaise your reverence.”

“What, in your present dress! without shoe or stocking?”