Knowing that their plants would flourish indoors as
well as out, he stooped to lift the large cakes of moss in which their
roots were set. The woman, who wore a small pink shawl tied over her
head and shoulders, came near to where he was stooping, and made no
preface, but said:
"He's dead, sir; or if he isn't, and if he should come back, O'Shea will
kill him!"
Caius did not need to ask of whom she spoke.
"Why?" he asked. "Why should O'Shea want to kill him?"
"It would kill her, sir, if he came back to her. She couldn't abide him
no ways, and O'Shea says it's as good one murder should be done as
another, and if he was hung for it he wouldn't mind. O'Shea's the sort
of man that would keep his word. He'd just feel it was a kind of
interesting thing to do, and he worships her to that extent. But I feel
sure, sir, that Le Maitre is dead. God would not be so unkind as to have
me and the children bereft in that way."
Her simple belief in her husband's power to settle the matter was
shocking to Caius, because he felt that she probably knew her husband
perfectly.
"But why," said he again, "would it kill her if he came back?"
"Well, what sort of a decent man is it that would have stayed away from
her all these years, poor lamb? Why, sir, she wasn't but a child at the
convent when her father had them married, and she back to school, and he
away to his ship, and never come to see her since.
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