The door led directly into the kitchen.  Two women were standing well back from the door, something respectful, a little mysterious and a little fearful in their attitude.  Their eyes were upon the Friar, and from their expressions they might have expected some sort of apparition to cross the threshold.  They made a curtesy to him, dipping their bodies in a little sudden jerk.  Nobody else was in the kitchen, and, despite the almost oppressive formality of their attitude, they somehow conveyed a sense of the power of women in the household in time of crisis.  They were in supreme command, the men all outside, when a life had to be battled for.  The elder of the women came forward and spoke to the priest, bidding him welcome.  The reception looked as if it had been rehearsed, both women painfully anxious to do what was right.

There appeared some little misunderstanding, and I was too dazed with the cold—­which I had only fully felt when I got off the car and found my legs cramped—­to come to the rescue as interpreter.  The Spanish Friar was accustomed to these little embarrassments, and he had a manner of meeting them with a smile.  The misunderstanding and the embarrassment seemed to thaw the formality of the reception.  The women looked relieved.  They were obviously not expected to say anything, and they had no fear now that they would be put to the ordeal of meeting a possibly superior person, one who might patronise them, make a flutter in their home, appal them by expecting a great deal of attention, in short, be “very Englified.”  The Spanish Friar had very quick intuitions and some subtle way of his own for conveying his emotions and his requirements.  He was in spirit nearer to the peasantry than many of the Friars who themselves came from the flesh of the peasantry.  And these two peasant women, very quick in both their intuitions and their intelligence, seemed at the very moment of the breakdown of the first attempt at conversation to understand him and he to understand them.  The elder of the women led the priest into a room off the kitchen where I knew Kevin Hooban lay ill.

The younger woman put a chair before the fire and invited me to sit there.  While I sat before the fire I could hear the quick but quiet step of her feet about the kitchen, the little swish of her garments.  Presently she drew near to the fire and held out a glass.  It contained what looked like discoloured water, very like the water in the shallow river with the shingly bottom.  I must have expressed some little surprise, even doubt, in my face, for she held the glass closer, as if reassuring me.  There was something that inspired confidence in her manner.  I took the glass and sipped the liquid.  It left a half-burned, peaty taste in the mouth, and somehow smacked very native in its flavour.  I thought of the hills, the lonely bushes, the slow movement of the chocolate-coloured river, the men with the primitive dark faces under the broad-brimmed hats, their mysterious, even dramatic way of grouping themselves around the lighted house.  The peaty liquid seemed a brew out of the same atmosphere.  I knew it was poteen.  And in a moment I felt it coursing through my body, warming my blood.  The young woman stood by the fire, half in shadow, half in the yellow flame of the turf fire, her attitude quiet but tense, very alert for any movement in the sick room.