It cared far more for Kearney than for him—no wonder, seeing how he had neglected it, yet, even though it ran to the sailor, Lestrange noted that its interest was not so much in the man as the object he was carrying, a little turtle that he had found trapped in a pool.
“Kearney,” said Lestrange, as they sat talking after supper that night, “you remember a long time ago my asking you about the other name you gave Dick—Dick M you called him.”
“Yes, sir,” said Kearney, “that’s what he labelled himself.”
“His mother’s name was Emmeline,” said Lestrange; “he used to call her Em. He was repeating his mother’s name, which he would have often heard from the lips of his father, but the strange thing is that he used both names. It was only the other day that I noticed the likeness, Kearney.”
“Which, sir?” asked Kearney.
“The likeness he bears to his mother and to his father as well. Sometimes when he is at play or when he sits quiet, it is just exactly as if I were looking at his mother when she was a tiny child, and sometimes when he is running about busy, it is just as if I were watching little Dick of long ago; the thing has given me a shock, Kearney, and I don’t know how to take it.”
“Well, sir,” said the sailor, “children are apt to take after their fathers and mothers. I’ve seen it often meself, an’ I wouldn’t be worryin’ about that, if I were you.”
“I know,” said the other, “but it’s a bit different in my case, Kearney. I have been waiting and hoping so long—and then to see them at last like—like reflections in a mirror—that’s what it is to me, Kearney—just like reflections in a mirror, things that I know and love, but that do not know me and do not love me.”
Now Kearney knew only of one child, the solid and redoubtable Dick M, and to hear Lestrange talking of two children and reflections in a mirror gave him a touch of the old uneasiness. Not knowing what to say, he said nothing, and the subject dropped.
It would have been better if Lestrange could have thrashed the whole thing out in conversation with someone of a more philosophic bent than the sailor. Thinking, in a case like this, leads to brooding.