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"Now aren't you the fine, noble-minded man to be thinking of the like?"

"I am so.... Well, I'll drive you, Mrs. Brennan. On Thursday, you say, to Kilaconnaghan. The round trip will cost you fifteen shillings."

"Fifteen shillings?"

Charlie Clarke had already re-started the car which was again humming dustily down the road. Mrs. Brennan turned wearily into the sewing-room and seated herself once more by the machine. She was crushed a little by the thought of the fifteen shillings. She saw clearly before her the long procession of the hours of torture for her eyes that the amount represented. It appeared well that she had not given the few coppers to old Marse Prendergast, for, even as things stood, she must approach some of her customers towards the settlement of small accounts to enable her to spend fifteen shillings in the display of her pride.... For eighteen years it had been thus with her, this continual scraping and worrying about money. She wondered and wondered now was she ever destined to find release from mean tortures. Maybe when her son had become a priest he would be good to his mother? She had known of priests and the relatives of priests, who had grown amazingly rich.