Father O’Leary seemed to accept the reply. He sighed as he lifted the teapot. When he handed the first cup to Father Mahon, he said in a very subdued voice, “I suppose, Peter, there isn’t a spare bed?”

“Why?”

“Well, I mean, if you’d like to stay...”

“Oh, no, thanks, I have to get back. The Dean is, I mean... anyway, there’s seven-o’clock Mass in the morning for the nuns.”

Father O’Leary took up his own cup and saucer and looked at it moodily.

“It’ll be a fine house,” Father Mahon tried helpfully, “when you’ve had a chance to get at it.”

“Ay,” Father O’Leary said listlessly. “Seems a bit damp, though.”

“Oh, well, any house would need a good airing...” Father Mahon began, then decided it was better to let the sentence trail away.

In the silence, they could hear the woman moving in the room upstairs, probably changing the sheets. Father O’Leary cleared his throat suddenly. “One of the big farmers, I believe, has bought the grave space next to his.”

Father Mahon looked up, bewildered.

“Conroy’s!” Father O’Leary said impatiently. “The man’s father is to be buried in it tomorrow. They paid a lot of money for it.”

“Oh, I see,” said Father Mahon, realizing the meaning of the grave digger’s remarks. “But isn’t that common enough in the country?”

“Isn’t what common enough?” Father O’Leary’s choler had not altogether been cured by promotion.

“Being buried next to a parish priest. It’s a peculiar form of class distinction, I believe.”

Father O’Leary considered the suggestion morosely. “I don’t know. No one around here would pay a bob extra unless they felt that Conroy had some... some remarkable qualities...”

“Conroy?”

“That’s what I’m saying!” He glared now. “How’d you like that? How’d you like to spend the night in the bed of a bloody saint?”

“Good God!” Father Mahon half-rose from his seat and slopped the tea over his knees. The bag slipped to the floor. He bent quickly to retrieve it and found that it too had been soaked. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, “I seem to have messed things up.”

Father O’Leary rose impatiently and went to the door. “Bring in a cloth, ma’am, will you?” he called. “We’ve spilled our tea.”

He stood by, waiting sullenly while Father Mahon wiped himself down, watched by the anxiously sympathetic woman. “You’re all right,” he burst out at last. “You’ll do!” But Father Mahon overscrupulously kept on wiping, until at last Father O’Leary seized the cloth, gave a couple of perfunctory wipes, and handed it back to the woman.

“Now,” said he as she left the room, “what d’you think of that? D’you think it’s true?”