"Farver Haygarty——" Carolan began.
"We don't want to know what Father Haygarty says!" snapped Mrs. Breagh, whose Protestant gorge rose at the Papistical teachings of the regimental chaplain. And then she remembered that in a few years the worldly prospects of her three children might depend on the good-will of this chubby-faced, red-haired urchin who stood silently before her, contemplating her with a new expression in a very round pair of oddly amber-flecked gray eyes. And being a weak, ill-balanced, underbred woman, and a mother into the bargain, she truckled, as such women will, to the latent potentialities vested in the stubborn wearer of the unfinished suit of clothes.
"Not but what Father Haygarty is a good man and much respected—and I dare say you're sorry for having kicked poor Josey. So, since it's your birthday we won't say any more about it—and Nurse shall pull out those basting-threads and sew on the brace-buttons when you're in bed to-night——"
"There! you hear! Stop, you young rascal! Come back and kiss your mother, and thank her, and run away to Mrs. Povah!" bade the Captain, for Carolan, driving a pair of grubby fists deep into the pockets of the new breeches, had swung contemptuously upon his heel, and made for the door.
"She's not my muvver!" said the son, pausing in his struggle with the door-handle to turn a flushed and frowning face upon his sire. "She said so just now and so did you!"
"Then shut the door!" thundered the Captain, but it had slammed before the words were fairly out. And Carolan stamped across the landing whistling defiantly, and burst into the nursery, where Baba—for the moment its sole occupant—was asleep in her bassinette, Alan and Monica having gone out to walk with Miss Josey, and Nurse being busy in the adjoining room.
Carolan's head was hot, and his heart felt big and swollen. He was a person of consequence, and at the same time a thing of no account. Thus the pride that flamed in his gray eyes was presently quenched by scalding salt drops of resentful indignation. He was sorrowful, elated, angry, and complacent, all at once, as he stood by Baba's crib.
He had never until now suspected Mrs. Breagh was not his mother. He had called her "Mamma" ever since he could speak. No question had ever risen in his mind as to the existence of some secret reason for her dislike of him.
When she had seemed most hateful in his eyes, by reason of her lacking reticence and absent sense of honor—for she couldn't keep a secret if she promised you ever so, and was always telling tales of you to Dada!—Carolan had frequently relieved his feelings by going into corners and calling her "that woman" under his breath. The appalling sense of crime, involved with the relief this process brought—for to call your real mother names would be a sin of the first magnitude—bad invested it with a dreadful fascination. Now the glamour had vanished, together with the wickedness. Mrs. Breagh was nothing to Carolan. He was the son of another woman—and she was dead in India. Her name was Milly—a gentle, prettily sounding name.
Only the day before, Carolan had found out what the thing grown-up people called "death" and "dying" meant. He had given a shiny sixpence that had lain hidden for weeks at the bottom of the pocket in his old plaid frock to Bugler Finnerty for a thrush he had limed, a beautiful brown thrush with a splendidly dappled breast. Only the bird's eyes looked like beads of dull jet glass instead of round black blobs of diamond-bright bramble-dew. And it had squatted on the foul floor of the little wood and wire cage in which Finnerty had been keeping it, panting, with ruffled feathers and open beak.