The old woman’s voice was so like Tommy’s that it made Mrs. Carriswood start.  Very softly she spoke:  “I only want to look at him a minute, Pat, jest a minute.  I ain’t seen him for so long.”

“And is it any longer for you than for me?” retorted the husband.  “Ye know what ye promised if I’d be taking you here, unbeknownst.  Don’t look his way!  Look like ye was a stranger to him.  Don’t let us be mortifying him wid our country ways.  Like as not ’tis the prisidint, himself, he is colloguein’ wid, this blessed minute.  Shtep back and be a stranger to him, woman!”

A stranger to him, his own mother!  But she stepped back; she turned her patient face.  Then—­Tommy saw her.

A wave of red flushed all over his face.  He took two steps down the aisle, and caught the little figure in his arms.

“Why, mother?” he cried, “why, mother, where did you drop from?”

And before Mrs. Carriswood could speak she saw him step back and push young Sackville forward, crying, “This is my father, this is the boy that knew your grandmother.”

He did it so easily; he was so entirely unaffected, so perfectly unconscious, that there was nothing at all embarrassing for anyone.  Even the Cabinet girl, with a grandmother in very humble life, who must be kept in the background, could not feel disconcerted.

For this happy result Mrs. Carriswood owns a share of the credit.  She advanced on the first pause, and claimed acquaintanceship with the Fitzmaurices.  The story of their last meeting and Tommy’s first triumph in oratory came, of course; the famous horseshoe received due mention; and Tommy described with much humor his terror of the stage.  From the speech to its most effective passage was a natural transition; equally natural the transition to Tommy’s grandmother, the Irish famine, and the benevolence of Lady Sackville.

Everybody was interested, and it was Sackville himself, who brought the Fitzmaurices’ noble ancestors, the apocryphal Viscounts Fitzmaurice of King James’s creation, on to the carpet.

He was entirely serious.  “My grandmother told me of your great-grandfather, Lord Fitzmaurice; she saw him ride to hounds once, when she was a little girl.  They say he was the boldest rider in Ireland, and a renowned duellist too.  King James gave the title to his grandfather, didn’t he? and the countryside kept it, if it was given rather too late in the day to be useful.  I am glad you have restored the family fortunes, Mr. Fitzmaurice.”

The Cabinet girl looked on Tommy with respect, and Miss Van Harlem blushed like an angel.