“Didn’t you and your brothers go?” asked Uncle Patrick, across the dinner-table.  My father laughed.

“Not we!  My mother got us there once—­but never again.”

“And did your sisters like it?”

“Like it?  They used to cry their hearts out.  I really believe it killed poor Jane.  She was consumptive and chilly, but always craving for fresh air; and granny never would have open windows, for fear of draughts on his bald head; and yet the girls had no fires in their room, because young people shouldn’t be pampered.”

“And ye never-r offer-r-ed—­neither of ye—­to go in the stead of them?”

When Uncle Patrick rolls his R’s in a discussion, my mother becomes nervous.

“One can’t expect boys to consider things,” she said.  “Boys will be boys, you know.”

“And what would you have ’em be?” said my father.  Uncle Patrick turned to my mother.

“Too true, Geraldine.  Ye don’t expect it.  Worse luck!  I assure ye, I’d be aghast at the brutes we men can be, if I wasn’t more amazed that we’re as good as we are, when the best and gentlest of your sex—­the moulders of our childhood, the desire of our manhood—­demand so little for all that you alone can give.  There were conceivable uses in women preferring the biggest brutes of barbarous times, but it’s not so now; and boys will be civilised boys, and men will be civilised men, sweet sister, when you do expect it, and when your grace and favours are the rewards of nobleness, and not the easy prize of selfishness and savagery.”

My father spoke fairly.

“There’s some truth in what you say, Pat.”

“And small grace in my saying it.  Forgive me, John.”

That’s the way Uncle Patrick flares up and cools down, like a straw bonfire.  But my father makes allowances for him; first, because he is an Irishman, and, secondly, because he’s a cripple.

* * * * *

I love my mother dearly, and I can do anything I like with her.  I always could.  When I was a baby, I would not go to sleep unless she walked about with me, so (though walking was bad for her) I got my own way, and had it afterwards.

With one exception.  She would never tell me about my godfather.  I asked once, and she was so distressed that I was glad to promise never to speak of him again.  But I only thought of him the more, though all I knew about him was his portrait—­such a fine fellow—­and that he had the same swaggering, ridiculous name as mine.

How my father allowed me to be christened Bayard I cannot imagine.  But I was rather proud of it at one time—­in the days when I wore long curls, and was so accustomed to hearing myself called “a perfect picture,” and to having my little sayings quoted by my mother and her friends, that it made me miserable if grown-up people took the liberty of attending to anything but me.  I remember wriggling myself off my mother’s knee when I