"He praiches—ay, bedad!—but does he ever practuss?" demanded Nurse, smoothing her apron with stout, matronly hands, and getting very red in the cheeks. "Niver fear but he'd be too wise to bring a curse upon himself by ill-thrating a motherless child!"
"Motherless!" What did the word mean? Carolan wondered, recalling how Nurse would describe some particularly down-hearted person as being as long in the jaw as a motherless calf. And now Mrs. Breagh was saying, in the kind of voice some good people use for the purpose of Scriptural quotation, and which is not in the least like their accents of every day...
"Solomon said, 'He that spareth the rod'—but you Catholics never seem to read the Bible. And I always treat Carolan as if he were my own child—and you know I do! 'Ssh! Here comes the Captain—and I think I hear Baba crying...."
And Nurse, with the honors of war, retired to the nursery on the other side of the landing, as Captain Breagh's hasty footsteps and the jingle of his scabbard were heard on the stone stair. A minute later he entered the room. But during the minute's interval Carolan had had time to ponder, mentally digest and form a conclusion from what he had just heard.
It had never previously occurred to him that the stout, dark, beady-eyed, brightly dressed lady whom he had been taught to call Mamma was not really his mother, but he knew it now. It was revealed to him in one lightning-flash of comprehension that this was the reason why her hands felt so like hands of wood whenever they touched him, and why her kiss,—religiously administered night and morning—was a thing he would much sooner have gone without. He knew,—and something inside him was glad to know—that it was not wicked of him not to love her as he loved Nurse, or Monica, or Ponto the brown retriever. And then his heart dropped like a leaden plummet to the pit of his infant stomach. This was to be a day of discoveries. He had discovered that by kicking out lustily it had been possible to resist the forcible removal of his new breeches. He had discovered that "Mamma" was not his real, real mother! Would Daddy turn out to be Monica's and Alan's and Baba's Daddy, and not Carolan's, after all?
A sob rose in his throat, and his hot, dry eyes began to smart and water. But the manly trampling and clanking came nearer. The door opened—his father was in the room. He could only see his shiny Wellington boots, and the bottoms of the red-striped dark blue breeches that were strapped over them. But familiar knowledge built from the boots the handsome manly figure in the light brick-red coat with the Royal blue facings, the China and Punjab war-medals, the crimson sash and the other martial accouterments topped by the stiff leather stock, and the head whose wealth of jet-black curls and luxuriant bushy whiskers might have been the glory of a fashionable hairdresser's window; in combination with the well-cut features, light blue eyes, and fine rosy complexion, as yet scarcely deteriorated by Mess port, whisky punch, and late hours.
Captain Breagh kissed Mrs. Breagh with a hearty smack that made Carolan start in his hiding-place, and said the wind was enough to cut you in two, and that the fire looked tempting; as he laid down his pipeclayed gloves and dress-schako with the gilt grenade and white ball-tuft on the aged and dilapidated sideboard, and permitted his lady to relieve him of his sword. Then he rubbed his hands and thrust them to the blaze enjoyingly, and threw himself into the creaking leathern arm-chair. This, it suddenly occurred to Carolan, would be a favorable moment for emerging from concealment. He had got on all-fours, ready to appear in the character of a bear or tiger, when Mrs. Breagh stopped him by beginning to tell tales. The child was beyond control, she declared—there was no end to his naughtiness. For the sake of his immortal soul, something would have to be done....
"What's he been doing? For my own part,—I wouldn't give a brass farthing for a pup that wouldn't bite, or a boy that wouldn't show fight when he was put to it!" The arm-chair creaked suggestively as the Captain stretched out his legs, and the firelight danced in the polish of his boots, hardly dimmed by the dry gravel of the Parade-ground. "And it's in the blood, that high spirit. Don't suppose I'm bragging that the Breaghs are any great shakes in the way of family!—though the name's as decent a one as you'll meet in a long day's march. But Carolan's a Fermeroy on the mother's side—and they're a hot-headed, high-handed breed," the Captain added, taking the newspaper from the Pembroke table, "and have been ever since the year One—if you take the trouble to look 'em up in Irish History. Not that I've ever read any, but my poor Milly used to say——"
His wife's eyes snapped with irrepressible jealousy at the reference to her predecessor.
"And everything that came from her you took for Gospel, I suppose?"