It was perfectly delightful to see the way he treated his mother, though there was not too much reverence in his teasing, and hardly more love than license.
When she told him to sit down if he had not forgotten the house, and said she hoped he had finished looking for South Poles and was ready to settle quietly at home, and he answered No, he would have to go back to London presently, she cried:
"There now, doctor? What was I telling you? Once they've been away, it's witched they are—longing and longing to go back again. What's there in London that's wanting him?"
Whereupon the doctor (thinking of the knighthood), with a proud lift of his old head and a wink at Father Dan, said:
"Who knows? Perhaps it's the King that's wanting him, woman."
"The King?" cried Christian Ann. "He's got a bonny son of his own, they're telling me, so what for should he be wanting mine?"
"Mary," said. Martin, as soon as he could speak for laughing, "do you want a mother? I've got one to sell, and I wouldn't trust but I might give her away."
"Cuff him, Mrs. Conrad," cried Father Dan. "Cuff him, the young rascal! He may be a big man in the great world over the water, but he mustn't come here expecting his mother and his old priest to worship him."
How we laughed! I laughed until I cried, not knowing which I was doing most, but feeling as if I had never had an ache or a care in all my life before.
Breakfast being over, the men going into the garden to smoke, and Sister Mildred insisting on clearing the table, Christian Ann took up her knitting, sat by my side, and told me the "newses" of home—sad news, most of it, about my father, God pity him, and how his great schemes for "galvanising the old island into life" had gone down to failure and fatuity, sending some to the asylum and some to the graveyard, and certain of the managers of corporations and banks to gaol.