“Arrah, now, but that’s good, as me dad says whin he tips up the jug. All that ye have to do is to sit here and let Mrs. McCaffry nurse that game leg till ye’re able to thravel.”
“Ah, if that was all! But I have a father and mother whose hearts I am breaking. I have two younger brothers and a sweet sister. What of them!” demanded Noxon almost fiercely.
“Ye have read the blissed story of the Prodigal Son, haven’t ye?”
“I am a thousandfold worse than that poor devil, who was simply foolish.”
“Do yer dad and mither know where ye are?”
“No; the one decent thing I did when I turned rascal was to change my name. Orestes Noxon is a nom de plume.”
“I don’t know the fellow, but that shows, me bye, ye ain’t such a big fool as ye look. I’m beginning to have hope for ye.”
A strange impulse came to Mike. It was to sing in a low, inexpressibly sweet voice a single stanza of a familiar hymn, just loud enough for the one auditor to hear. But he restrained himself, fearing the effect upon him. The “fountains of the deep” were already broken up, and the result might be regrettable. At that moment a heavy tread sounded on the little steps outside, the door was pushed inward, and the bulky form of the red-faced Mrs. McCaffry filled the whole space. She now stepped awkwardly and ponderously within.
“I begs that ye’ll oxcoose me for not coming in wid this blarney and inthrodoocing ye to aich ither. Have ye becoom acquainted?”
“It was an oversight which no Irish leddy should be guilty of,” gravely replied Mike, “espicially whin the same is the fourth cousin of me own mither. But ye have been away from the owld counthry so long that ye have forgot a good deal, Aunt Maggie.”