women, and of life freely given for noble purposes, until he was
wrought up into an ecstasy of selflessness and longing ... and then
Uncle William would come into the kitchen from the shop, stumbling,
perhaps, in the dark, and swear because the lamp was not lit.

Once, after he had listened for a few moments to one of Uncle Matthew's
tales, he had laughed bitterly and said, "I declare to my good God, but
you'd be in a queer way, the whole pack of you, if I was to quit the
shop and run up and down the world looking for adventures and women in
distress. I tell you, the pair of you, it's a queer adventure taking
care of a shop and making it prosper and earning the keep of the house.
There's no lovely woman hiding behind the counter 'til the young lord
comes and delivers her, but by the Holy Smoke, there's a terrible lot
of hard work!"

It had seemed to John then, as he contemplated his Uncle Matthew's
doleful face and listened to his plaintive admission, "I know I'm no
help to you!" that his Uncle William was a cruel-hearted man, and in
his anger he could have struck him. But now, after the affair with
Willie Logan and the talk about Uncle Matthew, and remembering, too,
that Uncle William was always very gentle with Uncle Matthew, even
though his words were sometimes rough, he felt that his heart had ample
room inside it for this rough, bearded man who made so few demands on
the affection of his family, and deserved so much.

John knew that his Uncle William and his mother shared the common
belief that Uncle Matthew was "quare," but, although he had often
thought about the matter, he could not understand why people held this
opinion. It was true that Uncle Matthew had been dismissed from the
Ballyards National School, in which he had been an assistant teacher,