“Isn’t this one deep enough for you? And I don’t see that it would necessarily be any finer. It might very well be extremely objectionable. All that would happen if you saw a ghost is that it would frighten you very much at the time, and afterwards you wouldn’t believe in it.” “I don’t think it would frighten me. I don’t think it would frighten anybody, if it were the ghost of somebody they had cared for a great deal.” Owen considered this. “I don’t suppose the ghost of your mother would frighten you. _Your_ mother is dead, isn’t she?” he added, and then stopped short. “I’m awfully sorry,” he stammered, “I wasn’t thinking of what I was saying.” I laughed. “It’s all right. My mother isn’t dead. Shall we go out before dinner?” Owen got up. We walked by the road as far as Shaw’s Bridge, where we branched off on to the river bank. It was already well on in April. The brilliant tender green of the opening leaves had spread like a delicate green flame over the black branches of the trees. The sky was clear, and there was a sharpness in the air that made us walk quickly. Owen’s dogs, two rough-haired Irish terriers, ran along the bank, sniffing among the coarse grass, alert, eager to hunt anything, whether a rat or a stick. Owen’s remark about my mother had reminded me that I had told him singularly little about myself, or rather, about my people. He did not know anything beyond the fact that we lived at Newcastle, and, from the way I had spoken of it, he might easily have imagined that Derryaghy was my home. I’m afraid an unconscious snobbery had kept me from revealing the obscurity of my origin, and I was suddenly struck by the stupidity and odiousness of this, especially with Owen, for whom such things meant nothing. “Why did you think my mother was dead?” I asked him. “I don’t know. I suppose because you never――I don’t know, I’m sure.” “I want to tell you about my people.” Curiously enough, though I had been so reluctant to mention that my father was a National schoolmaster, it did not trouble me in the least to talk about my mother. I even had some dim notion that it made me rather interesting; so I told him all I knew. “I have not seen her since,” I wound up, “and perhaps my father is not my real father.” Why I should have thrown in this after-touch I cannot conceive, as I had never in my life had the faintest doubts concerning my legitimacy; but I suppose it was to heighten the romance. “Do you think I ought to try to find out something more?” I asked. “You never did try!” exclaimed Owen. “Never very much. I don’t know who to ask. I can’t very well ask my father.” “Why?” “I can’t.” “There must be somebody else who knows. Your friend, Mrs. Carroll.” “She won’t tell me.” “Have you asked her?” “I asked her the last time I was at home.” “And what did she say?” “She doesn’t like her.” “She said she didn’t like her?” “No, of course not; but I know it all the same.”