"That's all right," he said. "Here, I say, you needn't pull that oar. Neal and I will put you ashore. We'll show that much hospitality to a County Antrim man from over the sea."
"Thank you," said Donald Ward. "Thank you. You mean well, and I take your words in the spirit you speak them; but when I sit in a boat I like to pull my own weight in her."
He shoved out his oar as he spoke, and fell into time with the long, steady stroke which Neal set.
Una leaned forward and spoke in a low voice to Neal, timing her words so that they reached him as he bent forward at the beginning of each stroke.
"Is'nt it curious, Neal, that Maurice and I are going back to welcome an aunt whom we have never seen, and that you are taking an unknown uncle home with you?"
"It's like a kind of fate, Neal, one of the things which happen to people, and alter all their lives, and they can't do anything to help themselves. I wonder will we ever have good times together again, now that this aunt of mine and this uncle of yours have come?"
"Oh, I don't know. But your uncle seems to be one of the people who make a great clatter about liberty and equality and the rights of man. And you know Aunt Estelle belonged to the old aristocracy in France. They wanted to guillotine her in the Terror. I don't think she will love Republicans."
"But that won't prevent our being friends, Neal?"
"Una, my father is always talking about the struggle that's coming in Ireland. I don't know much about politics. I think I hate the whole thing. But if there is trouble I suppose that I shall be on one side and you on the other."
Then, as his spirits grew depressed, her's seemed to rise buoyantly. She raised her voice so that she could be heard in the bow of the boat.
"Mr. Donald Ward! Mr. Donald Ward! Your nephew, Neal, is telling me that when we have a reign of terror in Ireland you will make him cut off my head. Please promise me you won't."
Donald rested on his oar and gazed at the girl as she sat smiling at him in the stern of the boat.
"Young lady," he said, "don't trouble yourself. We didn't hurt woman or girl in America. No woman shall die a violent death in Ireland at the hands of the people."
"And no man, either?" cried Una. "Say it again, Mr. Donald Ward. Say 'And no man, either.' Can't we settle everything without killing men?"