“Oh—Gregg, of course!”
My cousin Nannie (Mrs. Martin) replied with a sweet reasonableness, yet firmly, “I think you will find that Pakenham Walsh is the man.”
The battle then was joined. From argument it passed on into shouting, and thence neared fisticuffs. They advanced towards each other in large armchairs, even as, in these later days, the “Tanks” move into action. They beat each other’s knees, each lady crying the name of her champion, and then my aunt remembered that she had a train to catch, and rushed from the room. The air was still trembling with her departure, when the door was part opened, the monosyllable “Gregg!” was projected through the aperture, and before reply was possible, the slam of the hall door was heard.
Mrs. Martin flung herself upon the window, and was in time to scream “Paknamwalsh!” in one tense syllable, to my aunt’s departing long, thin back.
My aunt Florence was too gallant a foe to affect, as at the distance she might well have done, unconsciousness. Anyone who knows the deaf and dumb alphabet will realise what conquering gestures were hers, as turning to face the enemy she responded,
“G!R!E!G!G!”
and with the last triumphant thump of her clenched fists, fled round the corner.
And she was right. “Gregg & son, Bishops to the Church of Ireland,” have passed into ecclesiastical history.
CHAPTER IX
MYSELF, WHEN YOUNG
I have deeply considered the question as to how far and how deep I should go in the matter of my experiences as an Art student. Those brief but intense visits to Paris come back to me as almost the best times that life has given me. To be young, and very ardent, and to achieve what you have most desired, and to find that it brings full measure and running over—all those privileges were mine. I may have taken my hand from the plough, and tried to “cultiver mon jardin” in other of the fields of Paradise, but if I did indeed loose my hand from its first grasp, it was to place it in another, in the hand of the best comrade, and the gayest playboy, and the faithfullest friend, that ever came to turn labour to pastime, and life into a song.