Chapter V

"But why didn't you tell me you were coming?" he asked. "I'd have met you at the station!"

She ignored his question. "This is a terrible town," she said. "Mr. Hinde says there's near twice as many people in this place as there is in the whole of Ireland. How in the earthly world do they manage to get about their business?"

"Oh, quite easily," he said nonchalantly, and as he spoke he realised that he had come to be a Londoner.

"When I got out at the station," Mrs. MacDermott continued, "I called a porter and said to him, 'Just put that bag on your shoulder and carry it for me!' 'Where to, ma'am?' says he, and then I gave him your address. I thought the man 'ud drop down dead. 'Is it far?' says I. 'Far!' says he. 'It's miles!' By all I can make out, John, you live as far from the station as Millreagh is from Ballyards. I had to come here in one of them things that runs without horses ... what do you call them?"

"Taxi-cabs!"

"That's the name. It's a demented mad place this. Such traffic! Worse nor Belfast on the fair-day!"

"It's like that every day, Mrs. MacDermott!" Hinde interjected.

"What bothers me," she went on, "is how ever you get to know your neighbours!"

"We don't get to know them," Hinde replied. "I've lived in this house for several years, but I don't know the names of the people on either side of it!"

"My God," said Mrs. MacDermott, "what sort of people are you at all! Are you all fell out with each other?"

"No. We're just not interested!"

"I wouldn't live in this place for the wide world," she exclaimed. "And you," she continued turning to her son, "could come here where you know nobody from a place where you knew everybody. The world's queer! What was that water I passed on the way out?..."

"Water!"

"Aye. We went over it on a bridge!"

"Oh, the river!"

"What river!" she said.

"Why, the Thames, of course!"

"Is that what you call it?"

Hinde smiled at John. "So you've learned to call it the river, have you? Mrs. Hinde, in this town we always talk as if there were only one river in the world. A Londoner always says he's going up the river or down the river or on the river. He always speaks of it as the river. He never speaks of it as the Thames. In Belfast, you speak of the Lagan ... never of the river. The same in Dublin. They speak of the Liffey ... never of the river. John's become a Londoner. He knows the proper way to speak of the Thames!"

"London seems to be full of very conceited and unneighbourly people," Mrs. MacDermott said.

John demanded information of his mother. How were Uncle William and Mr. Cairnduff and the minister and Willie Logan?...

"His wife's got a child," Mrs. MacDermott replied severely.

"A boy or a girl?"

"A boy, and the spit of his father, God help him. Thon lad Logan'll come to no good. Aggie's courting hard. Some fellow from Belfast that travels in drapery. She told me to remember her to you!"

"Thank you, mother!"

Hinde rose to leave them. "You'll have a lot to say to each other, and I'm tired," he explained, as he went off to bed.

"I like that man," said Mrs. MacDermott when he had gone. "And now tell me about this girl you've got. Are you in earnest?"

"Yes, ma!" John answered, using the word "ma," now that he was alone with his mother.

"Will she have you?"

"I hope so. She hasn't said definitely yet, but I think she will!"

"Who is she? Moore you said her name was. That's an Irish name!"

"But she's not Irish. She's English. Her father was a clergyman, but he's dead. So is her mother. She has hardly any friends!"

"Does she keep herself?"

"Yes, ma. She works in a motor-place ... in the office, typing letters. She's an awful nice girl, ma! I'm just doting on her, so I am!"

"Do you like her better nor that Belfast girl that married the peeler?..."

"Och, that one," John laughed. "I never think of her now ... never for a minute. Eleanor's the one I think about!"

"Are you sure of yourself?..."

"As sure as God's in heaven, ma!"

"Oh, yes, we know all about that, but are you sure you're sure? You were queerly set on that Belfast girl, you know!"

He pledged himself as convincingly as he could to Eleanor, and told his mother that he could never be happy without her.

"And how do you propose to keep her?" she said, when he had finished.

"Work for her, of course!"

"How much have you earned since you came here?"

"Nothing!"

"And you've no work fornent you?"

"No, not at the minute. I had a job, but I lost it!"

He gave an account of his relationship with the _Daily Sensation._

"You'll not be able to buy much with that amount of work," she interrupted.

He told her of the sketch for the Creams and of the tragedy of St. Patrick.

"What's the use of writing about him," she said. "Sure, he's been dead this long while back!"

He did not attempt to make her understand. "And then there's the novel I wrote when I was at home," he concluded.

"But you've heard nothing of it yet. As far as I can see you've done little here that you couldn't have done at home!"

"Oh, yes I have. I've learned a great deal more than I could ever have learned in Ballyards. And I've met Eleanor!"

"H'm!" she said, rising from her seat. "I'm going to my bed now. That girl Lizzie seems a good-natured sort of a soul. Where does Eleanor live?"

"Oh, a long way from here!..."

"Give me her address, will you?"

"Yes, ma, but why?"

"I'm going to see her the morrow!"

He had to explain that Eleanor could not be seen in the day-time because of her employment, and he proposed that his mother should go with him in the evening to meet her at the bookstall at Charing Cross station.

"Very well," she said as she kissed him, "Good-night!"

THE SEVENTH CHAPTER