Secrets?

"I know the way you get to wondering " he said.

And he left it there, so Kit didn't even have to think any more about what Clio had said. Clio had told her that she had overheard a conversation in her home where someone had said that Martin McMahon had a job keeping that wife of his tied to Lough Glass and the miracle of the whole thing behing why she had ever come here in the first place. "I'm only telling you " Clio had said. "because you and I are best friends and I think you ought to know."

"Sister Madeleine?"

"Yes, Kit."

"Do you know the way people tell you everything?"

"Well, they tell me things Kit, because I haven't much to tell them, you see. What with fathering sticks and picking flowers and saying my prayers, there isn't much to tell"

"Do people tell you their secrets, like, their sins even?"

Sister Madeleine was shocked.

"No, Kit McMahon. Don't you know as well as I do that the only one we'd tel our sins to is an anointed priest of God, who has the power to act between God an man."

"Secrets then?"

"What are you saying to me at all? Chook, chook, chook,.. will you look at the little bantams. Brother Healy was so kind. He gave me a clutch of eggs and they all hatched out beside the fire... It was like a miracle."

She knelt on the floor to direct the little chickens away from some perilous journey they were about to make and back into the box of straw she had prepared for them.

Kit would not be put off. "I came by myself today because..."

"Yes, I missed Clio. She's a grand friend for you, isn't she?"

"She is and she isn't, Sister Madeleine. She told me that people were talking about my father and mother... and I wondered... I wanted to know maybe if you... "

Sister Madeleine straightened up. Her lined, weatherbeaten face was in a broad smile, as if she was willing the anxiety away from Kit.