She heard the old man: "Whist, Molly, let's be getting
out of this! HE is here with all his grand friends.
Don't let us be interrupting him."

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.