"Them people get a queer lot of stories to read," Uncle William said to console his nephew, disappointed because he had not received a letter of acceptance from the editor by Saturday morning, four days after he had posted the manuscript. "It'll mebbe take them a week or two to reach yours!..."
"They could have sent a postcard to say they'd got it all right," John replied ruefully. "That's the civil thing to do, anyway!"
He remembered that the Benson Shakespearean Company was still in Belfast and that Romeo and Juliet was to be performed in the afternoon, and Julius Caesar in the evening; and he went up to the city by an earlier train than usual so that he might be certain of getting to the theatre in time to secure an end seat near the front of the pit. He had proposed to his Uncle Matthew that he should go to Belfast, too, to see the plays, but Uncle Matthew shook his head and murmured that he was not feeling well. He had been listless lately, they had noticed, and Uncle William, regarding him one afternoon as he stood at the door of the shop, had turned to John and said that he would be glad when the summer weather came in again, so that Uncle Matthew could go down to the shore and lie in the sun.
"He's not a robust man, your Uncle Matthew!" he said. "I don't think he tholes the winter well!"
"Och, he's mebbe only a wee bit out of sorts," John answered. "I wish, he'd come to Belfast with me!..."
"He'll never go next or near that place again," Uncle William replied. "He's never been there since that affair!..."
"You'd wonder at a man letting a thing of that sort affect his mind the way Uncle Matthew let it affect his," John murmured.
"When a man believes in a thing as deeply as he believed in the oul' Queen," said Uncle William, "it's a terrible shock to him to find out that other people doesn't believe in it half as much as he does ... or mebbe doesn't believe in it at all!"
"I suppose you're right," said John.
"I am," said Uncle William.