"He was a Catholic?"
"He was."
"And so are you?"
He looked up. "Eh? I suppose I am—if any."
"What do you mean?" she insisted.
"Well," he said. "It's there, I expect. You don't get rid of it." She considered this to herself.
Mrs. Nugent—the Honourable Mrs. Nugent, as it afterwards appeared—made herself very amiable. "We both like boys," she said, "which makes everything easy. I hope you liked my Pat—you met him, I know. Yours seems to be an unconscious humourist. Jimmy is always chuckling over him. Mine takes after the Urquharts; rather grim, but quite sound when you know them. My husband is really Irish. He might say 'Begorra' at any minute. The Urquharts are a mixed lot. Jimmy says we're Eurasians when he's cross with us—which means with himself. I suppose we were border thieves once, like the Turnbulls and Pringles. But James I planted us in Ireland, and there have been James Urquharts ever since. I don't know why that seems satisfactory, but it does."
"I saw what Jimmy was saying, you know," she said presently. "He began upon me, and then slid off to our deplorable father. An inexhaustible subject to Jimmy, who really admires that kind of thing."
Lucy smilingly deprecated the criticism.
"Oh, but he does. If he could be like that, he would be. But he wants two qualities—he can't laugh, and he can't cry. Father could only laugh internally. He used to get crimson, and swallow hard. That was his way. Jimmy can't laugh at all, that's the mischief of it. And crying too. Father could cry rivers. One of the best things I remember of him was his crying before Mother. 'Damn it all, Meg, I missed him!' he said, choking with grief. Mother knew exactly what to say. 'You'll get him next time, Jimmy. Come and change your stockings now.' Well, our Jimmy couldn't do that. To begin with, of course, he wouldn't have 'missed him.'"