"Whenever I read in history or a story of people who had to do terrible things for those they loved, I think: 'Like my mother!' But no one I've ever read, or heard of, was like you," he said shyly.
"Dan!"
A smile of melting, eager tenderness suffused her eyes.
As they turned away he looked back at the grave under the trees.
"I thought I'd like to say good-bye to them," he said. "They were pioneers, weren't they, grandfather and grandmother? Makes me feel like being a bit of history myself, to think that my grandfather and grandmother were pioneers. I was saying to myself just now: 'They did so much against such big odds, what a lot I ought to be able to do with everything made easy for me."
"I wish your father and mother were down here, too," he added.
"I never knew my mother, Dan," Deirdre said dreamily. "You know, I've told you all about that. She died when I was born—and it was because I was such a wailing baby, that my father called me Deirdre—Deirdre of the griefs. And he—lies over there in the Island."
"I remember him," the boy said eagerly, his voice hushed. "When I was a little kid, we went, you, and I, and father, to see him, didn't we? And I sort of remember a tall, thin man who had white hair—quite white hair, and was blind; he was always singing, so as you could scarcely hear him, and once he said suddenly when I was on his knee, don't you remember: 'He's got her eyes, Deirdre?'"
"Yes." Deirdre murmured, the pain in her eyes deepening.
"I've wondered ... I've often wondered what he meant, mother. How could he know what my eyes were like. He was blind."