eather? And who would hear the wicket-gate click as the
latch was lifted, and put a welcome before him with a great shout,
uncles Alan or Robin, or a servant girl or boy, or the bent old gardener
who kept the lawn true as a bowling-green?... Or would it be his mother?

Section 5

Aboard ship the young apprentices had their problems, problems of
conduct, or of girls at home, or of money in port, but for young Shane
there was always the problem of his mother.

At home he had regarded as a matter of fact that she should come and go
in her hard, efficient French way. It had not seemed strange to him that
her mouth was tight, her eyes hard as diamonds. It was to him one with
his Uncle Robin's solemnity and Alan Donn's gruff sportsmanship. But
away from home he thought of it, brooded over it. Her letters to him
were so curt, so cut and dried! She wrote of the birth of another child
to young Queen Victoria,--as if that mattered a tinker's curse!--or how
her Holland bulbs, which she had bought at Belfast, had withered and
died. She directed him "to pray God to keep him pure in mind and body,
your affectionate mother, Louise de Damery Campbell." Alan Donn's
letters had the grand smell of harness about them. "You'll mind the
brown gelding we bought at Ballymena. He disgraced us at Dublin in the
jumping competitions. You know he can jump his own height, but he got
the gate after three tries. I could have graet like a bairn. Well, this
will be all from your loving Uncle Alan. P.S. I caught the white trout
in Johnson's Brae burn. I was after him, and he was dodging me for six
years. Your loving Uncle Alan, P.P.S. The championship is at Newcastle
this year, and I think I've a grand chance. If you're home, you can
caddy for me. Your loving Uncle Alan."

Uncle Robin's letters had vast wisdom. "Ay be reading the books, laddie.
An ill-educated man feels always at a disadvantage among folk of talent.
Aboard ship you can read and think more than at a university. I've got a
parcel for you to take when you go again. Hakluyt's Voyages and a good
Marco Polo. And the new book of Mr. Dickens, 'The Haunted Man.' And
there's a great new writer you'll not want to miss, by name of
Thackeray." And there'd be the Bank of England note, "for fear you might
be needing it on a special occasion, and not having it, and feeling
bad." Dear Uncle Robin! And then the flash of tenderness, like a
rainbow: "God bless you and keep you, my brother's son!"

Hi