and when she had finished her work and was descending the stairs she would be thinking partially about her own thoughts but also about a certain round and red-faced irish priest who drank too much and visited the nuns for dinner , a man whose laugh and look she did not like , but whom she could avoid by pausing to listen at the landings and then choosing a certain passage or a hall like a quiet clever mouse , in a building she now knew ten times better than anyone , including the mother superior herself .