human
Twinty-one years? So 'tis, Father--an' more! 'Tis twinty-one years to-day since I came, aven and true--the seventh day of October. Sure, somethin' ought to happen on such a day--oughtn't it?
gpt
Happen?
human
The seventh day of October, the twinty-first year and October bein' the month for thim,
gpt
But, Father, I'm the seventh son and sure ye must admit 'tis a lonesome country, all this, that looks so like Donegal and Killarney mountains, an' is so dead-like, wi' no little people to fill up the big gap between the dead an' the livin', an' the good an' the bad. 'Tis empty, all this valley.
human
Timothy Moran, that are my sister's husband's cousin's son, I'm ashamed of ye, an' I bid ye note that 'twas the hand of the Blessed Virgin herself that sent ye out o' Ireland, for if you'd 'a' stayed in th' ould country you'd 'a' been bewitched long before now--not, savin' us all th' blessed saints, that I belave in any of your nonsense!
gpt
You see how 'tis, Father. You cannot kape yourself from belivin' in thim and you a man o' God.
human
I do _not_, Timothy! Tis but a way of speech that I learned in my childhood. An' 'tis lucky for you that I have a knowledge of thim, for any other priest would have driven you out of the parish, you and your stubborn pipes that do naught but play faëry music. An' you a man of forty in a trifle of six days, and no wife an' childer to keep you from foolish notions. If ye had, now, you could be livin' in the proper tenant's house for the Wilcox's man, instead of Michael O'Donnell, who has no business livin' up here on the hill so far from his work that he can come home but once a week to look after his poor motherless child. I will say for you, Tim, that you do your duty by that bit of a slip of a girl baby, keepin' her so neat and clean an' all, times when Mike's not here.
gpt
Timothy Moran, you're not putting your foolish notions in the head of that innocent child o' God, Moira O'Donnell, are you?
human
Answer me, man! Are ye fillin' her mind with your sidhe[A] and your red-hatted little people an' your stories of 'gentle places' an' the leprechaun?
gpt
I am that, Father Delancey, 'tis th' only comfort of my life, livin' it, as I do, in a dead country--a valley where folks have lived and died for two hundred years such lumps of clay that they niver had wan man sharp enough to see the counts in between heaven and earth. He lapsed again into his listless position on the Round Stone.
human
But ye needn't be a-fearin' for her soul, Father--her wid th' black hair an' the big gray eyes like wan that cud see thim if she wud! She's as dead a lump as anny of th' rest--as thim meat-eatin' Protestants, the Wilcoxes, heaven save the kindly bodies, for they've no souls at all, at all. From the stone he picked up a curiously shaped willow whistle with white lines carved on it in an odd criss-cross pattern.
gpt
To-day's her seventh birthday, an' I showed her how to make the cruachan whistle, an' when I'd finished she blew on it a loud note that wud ha' wakened the sidhe for miles around in Donegal. An' then she looked at me as dumb as a fish, her big gray eyes blank as a plowed field wid nothin' sown in it. She niver has a word to show that she _hears_ me, even, when I tell o' the gentle people. He added in a whisper to himself,
human
But maybe she's only waiting.
gpt
returned the priest, rising with a relieved air.
human
She'll soon be goin' to district school along with all the other hard-headed little Yankees, and then your tales can't give her notions.