Almost without thinking I turned down the lane that led to the shore, and before I was conscious of where I was going, I found myself near Sunny Lodge.  The chimney was smoking for breakfast, and there was a smell of burning turf coming from the house, which was so pretty and unchanged, with the last of the year’s roses creeping over the porch and round the windows of the room in which I had slept when a child.

Somebody was digging in the garden.  It was the doctor in his shirt sleeves.

“Good morning, doctor,” I called, speaking over the fence.

He rested on his spade and looked up, but did not speak for a moment.

“Don’t you know who I am?” I asked.

“Why yes, of course; you must be. . . .”

Without finishing he turned his head towards the porch and cried: 

“Mother!  Mother!  Come and see who’s here at last!”

Martin’s mother came out of the porch, a little smaller, I thought, but with the same dear womanly face over her light print frock, which was as sweet as may-blossom.

She held up both hands at sight of me and cried: 

“There, now!  What did I tell you, doctor!  Didn’t I say they might marry her to fifty lords, but she wouldn’t forget her old friends!”

I laughed, the doctor laughed, and then she laughed, and the sweetest part of it was that she did not know what we were laughing at.

Then I opened the gate and stepped up and held out my hand, and involuntarily she wiped her own hand (which was covered with meal from the porridge she was making) before taking mine.

“Goodness me, it’s Mary O’Neill.”

“Yes, it’s I.”

“But let me have a right look at you,” she said, taking me now by both hands.  “They were saying such wonderful things about the young misthress that I wasn’t willing to believe them.  But, no, no,” she said, after a moment, “they didn’t tell me the half.”

I was still laughing, but it was as much as I could do not to cry, so I said: 

“May I come in?”

“My goodness yes, and welcome,” she said, and calling to the doctor to wash his hands and follow us, she led the way into the kitchen-parlour, where the kettle was singing from the “slowery” and a porridge-pot was bubbling over the fire.

“Sit down.  Take the elbow-chair in the chiollagh [the hearth place].  There!  That’s nice.  Aw, yes, you know the house.”

Being by this time unable to speak for a lump in my throat that was hurting me, I looked round the room, so sweet, so homely, so closely linked with tender memories of my childhood, while Martin’s mother (herself a little nervous and with a touching softness in her face) went on talking while she stirred the porridge with a porridge-stick.

“Well, well!  To think of all the years since you came singing carols to my door!  You remember it, don’t you? . . .  Of course you do.  ‘Doctor,’ I said, ’don’t talk foolish. She’ll not forget. I know Mary O’Neill.  She may be going to be a great lady, but haven’t I nursed her on my knee?’”