“Yes, yes, that’s just it,” he exclaimed delightedly, “the naughtiest, unmanageable child imaginable—that’s just what you were—and Lord! how I revelled in it! The first time I saw your bright, blinking brown eyes, and your ugly little face—for you were a very ugly baby, Paddy—my heart just went straight out to you, for I felt you at least were absolutely my own. Eileen was afraid of me; she wouldn’t leave her mother if she could help it, but you seemed to like the old man the best from the start. You would lie in my arms and stare up at me with the sauciest expression, as much as to say, ‘Just wait till I’m a bit bigger, I’ll lead you a dance.’ Then you would grab at my moustache and hang on like grim death; or you would start kicking out of pure mischief, and land out right and left like a little demon, till I was afraid I’d drop you. When you could toddle I was little better than a nursemaid, for there wasn’t a dangerous spot you wouldn’t immediately make for. The moment anyone’s back was turned you were missing, and it was a dead certainty you had found your way on to the quay, or taken a stroll along the railway, or tumbled into the cucumber frame. I couldn’t bear to go far for fear you would get into danger, and there’d be no one at hand to save you, so I just hung round the grounds all the time; and ever since then, Paddy, I’ve been as happy as a man need be, for somehow things drew your mother and me closer together.”
“Then we’ve all been happy, daddy, and that’s good, isn’t it? The aunties, and Jack, and you and mother, and Eileen and me, just the jolliest family party in the world.”
The General was silent a few moments, then he said, with a little tremor in his voice, “I’m thinking it can’t go on, Paddy.”
“Can’t go on!” with a sharp spasm of unknown dread. “Why not?—O why not?”
The old man did not answer. Instead, after another pause, he continued:
“When anything happens to me, Paddy, you’ll try and look after your mother just as if you were a son, won’t you? It will be hard on you, but you’re so plucky. I know you’ll do your best. You’ll always remember your old daddy worshipped her, and nothing’ll be too hard then for a brave girl like you.”
“Daddy, you are not to talk like this,” laughing that she might not cry. “We’ll be all together years and years yet.”
“I hope so, Paddy—I hope so, but I’m an old man and there’s no making the old young again in this world. You’ll remember about being a good son, eh!”
“Of course I will, daddy. I’ll just work like a slave to give her everything she wants, but we won’t talk about it now,” and she cleverly changed the subject.
That evening a third seizure took the General, and Jack was called in hurriedly to help to get him upstairs to his bed.