She stopped, as if she were communing with the past and then said shrewdly:

“Mind you, I noticed there was something queer coming over him latterly. Whenever I’d bring in his soup to him there I’d find him with his breviary fallen to the floor, lying back in the chair and his mouth open.”

She laid a finger against her nose and frowned: then she continued:

“But still and all he kept on saying that before the summer was over he’d go out for a drive one fine day just to see the old house again where we were all born down in Irishtown and take me and Nannie with him. If we could only get one of them newfangled carriages that makes no noise that Father O’Rourke told him about⁠—them with the rheumatic wheels⁠—for the day cheap⁠—he said, at Johnny Rush’s over the way there and drive out the three of us together of a Sunday evening. He had his mind set on that.⁠ ⁠… Poor James!”

“The Lord have mercy on his soul!” said my aunt.