His eyes were sparkling and so I suppose were mine, while with a joyous rush of racy words, (punctuated by me with "Yes," "Yes," "Yes") he told of a long despatch from the Lieutenant published by one of the London papers, in which Martin had been specially mentioned—how he had been put in command of some difficult and perilous expedition, and had worked wonders.
"How splendid! How glorious! How perfectly magnificent!" I said.
"Isn't it?" said the doctor, and for a few moments more we bandied quick questions and replies like children playing at battledore and shuttlecock. Then he said:
"But I'm after thinking it's mortal strange I never heard him mention you. There was only one chum at home he used to talk about and that was a man—a boy, I mean. Mally he was calling him—that's short for Maloney, I suppose."
"For Mary," I said.
"Mary, is it? Why, by the saints, so it is! Where in the name of St. Patrick has been the Irish head at me that I never thought of that before? And you were . . . Yes? Well, by the powers, ye've a right to be proud of him, for he was thinking pearls and diamonds of you. I was mortal jealous of Mally, I remember. 'Mally's a stunner,' he used to say. 'Follow you anywhere, if you wanted it, in spite of the devil and hell.'"
The sparkling eyes were growing misty by this time but the woman in me made me say—I couldn't help it—
"I dare say he's had many girl friends since my time, though?"
"Narra a one. The girls used to be putting a glime on him in Dublin—they're the queens of the world too, those Dublin girls—but never a skute of the eye was he giving to the one of them. I used to think it was work, but maybe it wasn't . . . maybe it was. . . ."
I dare not let him finish what I saw he was going to say—I didn't know what would happen to me if he did—so I jumped in by telling him that, if he would step into the car, I would drive him back to Rome.