but she couldn't do anything with him. 'Tush, me
dear,' he used to say, 'I wouldn't hurt a hair of his bald head.' And
then he'd have to bolt over to France for a bit and keep quiet. But
everybody liked him, I'm sorry to say. They gave him a public funeral
when he died. They took him out of the hearse--imagine the great sooty
plumes of it--and carried him to the chapel--half a mile away." Lucy
didn't know how much of this to believe, which made it none the worse.

"He was a Catholic?"

"He was."

"And so are you?"

He looked up. "Eh? I suppose I am--if any."

"What _do_ you mean?" she insisted.

"Well," he said. "It's there, I expect. You don't get rid of it." She
considered this to herself.

Mrs. Nugent--the Honourable Mrs. Nugent, as it afterwards
appeared--made herself very amiable. "We both like boys," she said,
"which makes everything easy. I hope you liked my Pat--you met him, I
know. Yours seems to be an unconscious humourist. Jimmy is always
chuckling over him. Mine takes after the Urquharts; rather grim, but
quite sound when you know them. My husband is really Irish. He might
say 'Begorra' at any minute. The Urquharts are a mixed lot. Jimmy
says we're Eurasians when he's cross with us--which means with
himself. I suppose we were border thieves once, like the Turnbulls and
Pringles. But James I planted us in Ireland, and there have been James
Urquharts ever since. I don't know why that seems satisfactory, but it
does."

"I saw what Jimmy was saying, you know," she said presently. "He began
upon me, and then slid off to our deplorable father. An inexhaustible
subject to Jimmy, who really admires that kind of thing."

Lucy smilingly deprecated the criticism.

"Oh, but he does. If he could be like that, he would be. But he wants
two qualities--he can't laugh, and he can't cry. Father could only
laugh internally. He used to get crimson, and swallow hard. That was
his way. Jimmy can't laugh at all, that's the mischief of it. And
crying too. Father could cry rivers. One of the best things I remember
of him was his crying before Mother. 'Damn it all, Meg, I missed him!'
he said, choking with grief. Mother knew exactly what to say. 'You'll
get him next time, Jimmy. Come and change your stockings now.' Well,
_our_ Jimmy couldn't do that. To begin with, of course, he wouldn't
have 'missed him.'"

"No," said Lucy, reflecting, "I don't think he would miss--unless he
was in too much of a hurry to hit."

Mrs