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.