"Don't, ma!" John pleaded, holding her as if she were a distressed child.
"I can't help it, John," she cried. "I'll be all right in a wee while, but I can't help it yet!"
After a time, she gained control of herself, and gradually her sobs subsided, and then they ceased.
"But I couldn't control myself any longer. I'll not give way again, John!"
She went to the scullery and returned with cups and saucers which she put on the table.
"Would you like some soda-bread or wheaten farls?" she asked.
"I'll have them both," he answered. He paused for a moment, and then, before she had time to go to the pantry, he went on. "You know, ma, I ... I _have_ to go. I mean I ... I _have_ to go!"
"Yes. I ... I _have_ to go. I was friends with a girl!..."
She came quickly to his side, and put her arms round his neck. The misery had suddenly gone from her face, and there was a look of anxiety, mingled with gratification, in her eyes.
"That's it, is it?" she said. "Oh, I thought you were tired of your home. Poor son, poor son, did she not treat you well?"
"She was married this morning on a peeler, ma!"
"And you in love with her?" she exclaimed indignantly.
"The woman's a fool," said Mrs. MacDermott. "You're well rid of her!..."
He saw now that there would be no further objection made by his mother against his going from home. As clearly as if she had said so, he understood that she now regarded his departure from home as a pilgrimage from which in due time he would return, purged of his grief. And she was content.
"A woman that would marry a peeler when she might marry a MacDermott, is not fit to marry a MacDermott," she said, almost to herself.
And so, when three months later, he decided to go to London, she did not try to hold him back. He had worked hard on a bitter novel that would, he imagined, fill men with amazement and women with shame, and when he had completed it, he bound the long, loose sheets of foolscap together and announced that he was now ready to go to London. Mr. Cairnduff told him of lodgings in Brixton, where an old friend of his, an Ulsterman and a journalist, was living, and Mr. McCaughan gave him a very vivid account of the perils of London life. "Bad women!" he said, ominously, "are a terrible temptation to a young fellow all by himself in a big town!" and then, brightening a little, he remarked that he need not tell so sensible a lad as John how to take care of himself. John had only to remember that he was a MacDermott!...