He put the stool in the fireplace and sat on it, shouting as he did so between a laugh and a cry, “Aw, Grannie, bogh—Grannie, bogh! to think there's been half the world between us since I was sitting here before!”
And Grannie herself, breaking down, said, “Wouldn't you like the tongs, boy? Give the boy the tongs, woman, just to say he's at home.”
Pete plucked the tongs out of Nancy's hands, and began feeding the fire with the gorse. “Aw, Grannie, have I ever been away?” he cried, laughing, and his wet eyes gleaming.
“Nancy Joe, have you no nose at all?” cried Grannie. “The cake's burning to a cinder.”
“Let it burn, mother,” shouted Pete. “It's the way she was doing herself when she was young and forgetting. Shillings a-piece for all that's wasted. Aw, the smell of it's sweet!”
So saying he piled the gorse on the fire, ramming it under the griddle and choking it behind the crow. And while the oatcake crackled and sparched and went black, he sniffed up the burning odour, and laughed and cried in the midst of the smoke that went swirling up the chimney.
And meanwhile, Grannie herself, with the tears rolling down her cheeks, was flapping her apron before her face and saying, “He'll make me die of laughing, he will, though—yes, he will!” But behind the apron she was blubbering to Nancy, “It's coming home, woman, that's it—it's just coming home again, poor boy!”
By this time word of Pete's return had gone round Sulby? and the bar-room was soon thronged with men and women, who looked through the glass partition into the kitchen at the bronzed and bearded man who sat smoking by the fire, with his dog curled up at his feet. “There'll be a wedding soon,” said one. “The girl's in luck,” said another. “Success to the fine girl she always was, and lucky they kept her from the poor toot that was beating about on her port bow.”—“The young Ballawhaine, eh?”—“Who else?”
Presently the dog went out to them, and, in default of its master, became a centre of excited interest. It was an old creature, with a settled look of age, and a gravity of expression that seemed to say he had got over the follies of youth, and was now reserved and determined to keep the peace. His back was curved in as if a cart-wheel had gone over his spine, he had gigantic ears, a stump of a tail, a coat thin and prickly like the bristles of a pig, but white and spotted with brown.
“Lord save us! a queer dog, though—what's his breed at all?” said one; and then a resounding voice came from the kitchen doorway, saying—