Offerings

Abstract

The parish priest stood within the door reading his breviary. But although he was reading and moving his lips in prayer, one of his eyes undoubtedly watched the little table that rested against the whitewashed humpy wall to the left of the door. There was a small, white, stiff, linen cloth, like a big napkin chequered with rigid creases, spread on the little table. No. It was not a table really. The home was too poor to have a table. There were only deal forms, painted red, in the house, and little three-legged green stools. So an orange-box had been placed on a stool and the priest had brought a napkin in his overcoat pocket. It was the priest’s stiffly ironed napkin.