Molly, in the village at home, had always made the expression of gratitude impossible, but she constantly added ingratitude as a large item in the account she kept running, in her darker hours, against the human race.

Late on a wet and windy October evening she went to undertake the nursing of Pat Moloney for the first part of the night.  She had been visiting him constantly for several weeks, and actually nursing him for three days.

“Has the doctor been?”

“Yes, miss” (in a very loud whisper); “he says Pat is awful bad; he left a paper for you.”

Molly Dexter walked across the small, bare room and took a paper of directions from the chimney-piece, and then stood looking at the old man’s heavy figure on the bed.  He was lying on his side, his face turned to the wall.

“You had better rest in the back room while I am here,” she said.

“I couldn’t, indeed I couldn’t, miss, him being like that; you mustn’t ask me to.  Besides, I’ve been round and asked the priest to come, and so I couldn’t take my things off.  I’ll just have some tea and a drop of whisky in it, and I can keep going all the night, it’s more than likely he’ll die at the dawn.”

Molly eyed the woman with supreme contempt.

“It isn’t at all certain that he’s going to die, he’ll make a good fight yet if you will give him a chance.”

Mrs. Moloney looked deeply offended.  It had been all very well to be guided by a lady at the beginning of the illness, but now it was very different.  She felt half consciously that science had done its worst, and bigger questions than temperatures and drugs were at issue.

“A priest now,” said Molly, in a whisper of intense scorn, “would kill him at once.”

Mrs. Moloney did not condescend to reply.  She had propped a poor little crucifix, a black cross, with a chipped white figure on it, against a jam pot on a shelf under the window, and she had borrowed two candlesticks with coloured candles from a labourer’s wife on the floor beneath.  The window had been shut, so that the wind should not blow down these objects.

Molly looked at the man on the bed and sniffed.

“He must have air—­” the whisper was a snort.

At that moment there was a knock on the outer door.  On the iron outer stairs was standing the priest.

“It’s just the curate,” said Mrs. Moloney, looking out of the window; and then she disappeared into the tiny passage.

Molly stood defiantly, her figure drawn to its full height.  She felt that she knew exactly the kind of Irish curate who was coming in to disturb, and probably kill, the unhappy man on the bed.  Well, she should make a fight for this poor, crushed life; she would stand between the horrible tyranny and superstition that lit those pink candles, and that would rouse a man to make his poor wretched conscience unhappy and frighten him to death.  “If there is a hell,” she muttered, “it must be ready to punish such brutality as that.”