14/38 He nourished a secret passion for Finola. He never ventured to declare it, but his imagination endowed every heroine, from Queen Maev down to the foster daughter of the Leinster farmer who married King Cormac, with Miss Goold's figure, eyes and hair. It was perhaps the burning of this passion which rendered him so cadaverous that his clothes--in other respects also they looked as if they had been bought in far-off happier days--hung round him like the covering of a broken-ribbed umbrella. He was what the country people call a 'spoilt priest.' Destined by simple and pious parents to take Holy Orders, he got as far as the inside of Maynooth College. While there he had kicked a fellow-student down the whole length of a long corridor for telling tales to the authorities. |