‘His father! I’m sure I did not say a tenth part of what the fellow richly deserves. If the young gentleman is so touchy, he had better go back to Ireland again.’
Nothing more favourable could Mr. Kendal obtain, though he thought Mr. Goldsmith uneasy, and perhaps impressed by the independence of his nephew’s attitude.
It was an arduous office for a peace-maker, where neither party could comprehend the feelings of the other, but on his return he found that Ulick had stormed himself into comparative tranquillity, and was listening the better to the womankind, because they had paid due honour to the amiable ancestral Tigearnach and all his guttural posterity, whose savage exploits and bloody catastrophes acted as such a sedative, that by the time he had come down to Uncle Bryan of the Kaffir war, he actually owned that as to the mighty ‘O,’ Mr. Goldsmith might have erred in sheer ignorance.
‘After all,’ said Albinia, ‘U. O’More is rather personal in writing to a creditor.’
‘It might be worse,’ said Ulick, laughing, ‘if my name was John. I. O’More would be a dangerous confession. But I’ll not be come round even by your fun, Mrs. Kendal, I’ll not part with my father’s name.’
‘No, that would be base,’ said Sophy.
‘Who would wish to persuade you?’ added Albinia. ‘I am sure you are right in refusing with your feelings; I only want you to forgive your uncle, and not to break with him.’
‘I’d forgive him his ignorance, but my mother herself could not wish me to forgive what he said of my father.’
‘And how if he thinks this explosion needs forgiveness?’
‘He must do without it,’ said Ulick. ‘No, I was cool, I assure you, cool and collected, but it was not fit for me to stand by and hear my father insulted.’