"I do, darlin'! Fourteen years all but three days! He'll be gone fifteen if we all live till Wednesday week."
"Fifteen? But, mother, if he were like me when he went, he can't be very like me now. He must be a middle-aged man. Do you think you'd know him?"
This question was more unfortunate than the other, and produced such howling and weeping, and beating of Biddy's knees as she rocked herself among the beans, that I should have thought every soul in the docks would have crowded round us. But no one took any notice, and by degrees I calmed her, chiefly by the assertion—"He'll know you, mother, anyhow."
"He will so, God bless him!" said she. "And haven't I gone over it all in me own mind, often and often, when I'd see the vessels feelin' their way home through the darkness, and the coffee staymin' enough to cheer your heart wid the smell of it, and the least taste in life of something betther in the stone bottle under me petticoats. And then the big ship would be coming in with her lights at the head of her, and myself would be sitting alone with me patience, God helping me, and one and another strange face going by. And then he comes along, cold maybe, and smells the coffee. 'Bedad, but that's a fine smell with it,' says he, for Micky was mighty particular in his aitin' and drinkin'. 'I'll take a dhrop of that,' says he, not noticing me particular, and if ever I'd the saycret of a good cup he gets it, me consayling me face. 'What will it be?' says he, setting down the mug. 'What would it be, Micky, from your mother?' says I, and I lifts me head. Arrah, but then there's the heart's delight between us. 'Mother!' says he. 'Micky!' says I. And he lifts his foot and kicks over the barra, and dances me round in his arms. 'Ochone!' says the spictators; 'there's the fine coffee that's running into the dock.' 'Let it run,' says I, in the joy of me heart, 'and you after it, and the barra on the top of ye, now Micky me son's come home!'"
"Wonderfully jolly!" said I. "And it must be pleasant even to think of it."
There is another new character in the second part of "We," who is also a fine picture:—Alister the blue-eyed Scotch lad, with his respect for "book-learning," and his powers of self-denial and endurance; but Julie certainly had a weakness for the Irish nation, and the tender grace with which she touches Dennis O'Moore and Biddy shines conspicuously throughout the story. In one scene, however, I think she brings up her Scotch hero neck-and-neck, if not ahead, of her favourite Irishman.
This is in Chapter VII., where an entertainment is being held on board ship, and Dennis and Alister are called upon in turn to amuse the company with a song. Dennis gets through his ordeal well; he has a beautiful voice, which makes him independent of the accompaniment of a fiddle (the only musical instrument on board), and Julie describes his simpatico rendering of "Bendemeer's Stream" from the way in which she loved to hear one of our brothers sing it. He had learned it by ear on board ship from a fellow-passenger, and she was never tired of listening to the melody. When this same brother came to visit her whilst she was ill at Bath, and sang to her as she lay in bed,—"Bendemeer's Stream" was the one strain she asked for, and the last she heard.
Dennis O'Moore's performance met with warm applause, and then the boatswain, who had a grudge against Alister, because the Scotch Captain treated his countryman with leniency, taunted the shy and taciturn lad to "contribute to the general entertainment."
I was very sorry for Alister, and so was Dennis, I was sure, for he did his best to encourage him.