“That’ll beat ’em,” cried my father, and he leapt to his feet and laughed.

Going to the door of the room, he flung it open.  The servants in the hall were now whispering eagerly, and one of them, the gardener, Tom Dug, commonly called Tommy the Mate, stepped out and asked if he ought to ring the big bell.

“Certainly,” said my father.  “Isn’t that what you’ve been standing by for?”

A few minutes later the bell of the tower began to ring, and it was followed almost immediately by the bell of our parish church, which rang out a merry peal.

“That’ll beat ’em, I say,” cried my father, and laughing in his triumph he tramped the flagged floor with a firmer step than ever.

All at once the crying of the child ceased and there was a confused rumble of voices overhead.  My father stopped, his face straightened, and his voice, which had rung out like a horn, wheezed back like a whistle.

“What’s going doing?  Where’s Conrad?  Why doesn’t Conrad come to me?”

“Don’t worry.  He’ll be down presently,” said Father Dan.

A few minutes passed, in which nothing was said and nothing heard, and then, unable to bear the suspense any longer, my father went to the foot of the staircase and shouted the doctor’s name.

A moment later the doctor’s footsteps were heard on the stone stairs.  They were hesitating, halting, dragging footsteps.  Then the doctor entered my father’s room.  Even in the sullen light of the peat fire his face was white, ashen white.  He did not speak at first, and there was an instant of silence, dead silence.  Then my father said: 

“Well, what is it?”

“It is . . .”

“Speak man! . . .  Do you mean it is . . . dead?”

“No!  Oh no!  Not that.”

“What then?”

“It is a girl.”

“A gir . . .  Did you say a girl?”

“Yes.

“My God!” said my father, and he dropped back into the chair.  His lips were parted and his eyes which had been blazing with joy, became fixed on the dying fire in a stupid stare.

Father Dan tried to console him.  There were thistles in everybody’s crop, and after all it was a good thing to have begotten a girl.  Girls were the flowers of life, the joy and comfort of man in his earthly pilgrimage, and many a father who bemoaned his fate when a daughter had been born to him, had lived to thank the Lord for her.

All this time the joy bells had been ringing, and now the room began to be illuminated by fitful flashes of variegated light from the firework-frame on the top of Sky Hill, which (as well as it could for the rain that had soaked it) was sputtering out its mocking legend, “God Bless the Happy Heir.”

In his soft Irish voice, which was like a river running over smooth stones, Father Dan went on with his comforting.

“Yes, women are the salt of the earth, God bless them, and when I think of what they suffer that the world may go on, that the generations may not fail, I feel as if I want to go down on my knees and kiss the feet of the first woman I meet in the street.  What would the world be without women?  Think of St. Theresa!  Think of the Blessed Margaret Mary!  Think of the Holy Virgin herself. . . .”