.

I remember my father telling us how his sisters had to visit their old
granny for months at a time, and how he shut the shutters at three
o'clock on summer afternoons, and made them play dummy whist by candle
light.

"Didn't you and your brothers go?" asked Uncle Patrick, across the
dinner-table. My father laughed.

"Not we! My mother got us there once--but never again."

"And did your sisters like it?"

"Like it? They used to cry their hearts out. I really believe it
killed poor Jane. She was consumptive and chilly, but always craving
for fresh air; and granny never would have open windows, for fear of
draughts on his bald head; and yet the girls had no fires in their
room, because young people shouldn't be pampered."

"And ye never-r offer-r-ed--neither of ye--to go in the stead of
them?"

When Uncle Patrick rolls his R's in a discussion, my mother becomes
nervous.

"One can't expect boys to consider things," she said. "Boys will be
boys, you know."

"And what would you have 'em be?" said my father. Uncle Patrick turned
to my mother.

"Too true, Geraldine. Ye don't expect it. Worse luck! I assure ye, I'd
be aghast at the brutes we men can be, if I wasn't more amazed that
we're as good as we are, when the best and gentlest of your sex--the
moulders of our childhood, the desire of our manhood--demand so little
for all that you alone can give. There were conceivable uses in women
preferring the biggest brutes of barbarous times, but it's not so now;
and boys will be civilised boys, and men will be civilised men, sweet
sister, when you _do_ expect it, and when your grace and favours are
the rewards of nobleness, and not the easy prize of selfishness and
savagery."

My father spoke fairly.

"There's some truth in what you say, Pat."

"And small grace in my saying it. Forgive me, John."

That's the way Uncle Patrick flares up and cools down, like a straw
bonfire. But my father makes allowances for him; first, because he is
an Irishman, and, secondly, because he's a cripple.

* * * * *

I love my mother dearly, and I can do anything I like with her. I
always could. When I was a baby, I would not go to sleep unless she
walked about with me, so (though walking was bad for her) I got my own
way, and had it afterwards.

With one exception. She would never tell me about my godfather. I
asked once, and she was so distressed that I was glad to promise never
to speak of him