I spoke seriously about Lettice.  It is not pleasant for a fellow to have a sister who grows up peculiar, as I believe Lettice will.  Only the Sunday before, I told her she would be just the sort of woman men hate, and she said she didn’t care; and I said she ought to, for women were made for men, and the Bible says so; and she said grandmamma said that every soul was made for GOD and its own final good.  She was in a high-falutin mood, and said she wished she had been christened Joan instead of Lettice, and that I would be a true Bayard; and that we could ride about the world together, dressed in armour, and fighting for the right.  And she would say all through the list of her favourite heroines, and asked me if I minded their being peculiar, and I said of course not, why should you mind what women do who don’t belong to you?  So she said she could not see that; and I said that was because girls can’t see reason; and so we quarrelled, and I gave her a regular lecture, which I repeated to Uncle Patrick.

He listened quite quietly till my mother came in, and got fidgetty, and told me not to argue with my uncle.  Then he said—­

“Ah! let the boy talk, Geraldine, and let me hear what he has to say for himself.  There’s a sublime audacity about his notions, I tell ye.  Upon me conscience, I believe he thinks his grandmother was created for his particular convenience.”

That’s how he mocks, and I suppose he meant my Irish grandmother.  He thinks there’s nobody like her in the wide world, and my father says she is the handsomest and wittiest old lady in the British Isles.  But I did not mind.  I said,

“Well, Uncle Patrick, you’re a man, and I believe you agree with me, though you mock me.”

“Agree with ye?” He started up, and pegged about the room.  “Faith! if the life we live is like the globe we inhabit—­if it revolves on its own axis, and you’re that axis—­there’s not a flaw in your philosophy; but IF—­Now perish my impetuosity!  I’ve frightened your dear mother away.  May I ask, by the bye, if she has the good fortune to please ye, since the Maker of all souls made her, for all eternity, with the particular object of mothering you in this brief patch of time?”

He had stopped under the portrait—­my godfather’s portrait.  All his Irish rhodomontade went straight out of my head, and I ran to him.

“Uncle, you know I adore her!  But there’s one thing she won’t do, and, oh, I wish you would!  It’s years since she told me never to ask, and I’ve been on honour, and I’ve never even asked nurse; but I don’t think it’s wrong to ask you.  Who is that man behind you, who looks such a wonderfully fine fellow?  My Godfather Bayard.”

I had experienced a shock the night before, but nothing to the shock of seeing Uncle Patrick’s face then, and hearing him sob out his words, instead of their flowing like a stream.

“Is it possible?  Ye don’t know?  She can’t speak of him yet?  Poor Geraldine!”