Pete watched their wheedling, fawning, and whisking of the tail, and then he said, “Chut! What's there so wonderful about a woman going by herself to Liverpool when she's got somebody waiting at the stage to meet her?”
The laughing faces lengthened suddenly. “And had she, then,” said John the Clerk.
Pete puffed furiously, rolled in his seat, laughed like a man with a mouth full of water, and said, “Why, sartenly—my uncle, of coorse.”
Jonaique wrinkled his forehead. “Uncle,” he said, with a click in his throat.
“Yes, my Uncle Joe,” said Pete.
Jonaique looked helplessly across at John the Clerk. John the Clerk puckered up his mouth as if about to whistle, and then said, in a faltering way, “Well, I can't really say I've ever heard tell of your Uncle Joe before, Capt'n.”
“No?” said Pete, with a look of astonishment. “Not my Uncle Joseph? The one that left the island forty years ago and started in the coach and cab line? Well, that's curious. Where's he living? Bless me, where's this it is, now? Chut! it's clane forgot at me. But I saw him myself coming home from Kimberley, and since then he's been writing constant. 'Send her across,' says he; 'she'll be her own woman again like winking.' And you never heard tell of him? Not Uncle Joey with the bald head? Well, well! A smart ould man, though. Man alive, the lively he is, too, and the laughable, and the good company. To look at that man's face you'd say the sun was shining reg'lar. Aw, it's fine times she'll be having with Uncle Joe. No woman could be ill with yonder ould man about. He'd break your face with laughing if it was bursting itself with a squinsey. And you never heard tell of my Uncle Joe, of Scotland Road, down Clarence Dock way? To think of that now!”
They went off with looks of perplexity, and Pete turned into the house. “They're trying to catch me; they're wanting to shame my poor lil Kirry. I must keep her name sweet,” he thought.
The church bells had begun to ring, and he was telling himself that, heavy though his heart might be, he must behave as usual.
“She'll be going walking to church herself this morning, Nancy,” he said, putting on his coat, “so I'll just slip across to chapel.”