Mrs. Nugent--the Honourable Mrs. Nugent, as it afterwards appeared--made herself very amiable. "We both like boys," she said, "which makes everything easy. I hope you liked my Pat--you met him, I know. Yours seems to be an unconscious humourist. Jimmy is always chuckling over him. Mine takes after the Urquharts; rather grim, but quite sound when you know them. My husband is really Irish. He might say 'Begorra' at any minute. The Urquharts are a mixed lot. Jimmy says we're Eurasians when he's cross with us--which means with himself. I suppose we were border thieves once, like the Turnbulls and Pringles. But James I planted us in Ireland, and there have been James Urquharts ever since. I don't know why that seems satisfactory, but it does." "I saw what Jimmy was saying, you know," she said presently. "He began upon me, and then slid off to our deplorable father. An inexhaustible subject to Jimmy, who really admires that kind of thing." Lucy smilingly deprecated the criticism. "Oh, but he does. If he could be like that, he would be. But he wants two qualities--he can't laugh, and he can't cry. Father could only laugh internally. He used to get crimson, and swallow hard. That was his way. Jimmy can't laugh at all, that's the mischief of it. And crying too. Father could cry rivers. One of the best things I remember of him was his crying before Mother. 'Damn it all, Meg, I missed him!' he said, choking with grief. Mother knew exactly what to say. 'You'll get him next time, Jimmy. Come and change your stockings now.' Well, _our_ Jimmy couldn't do that. To begin with, of course, he wouldn't have 'missed him.'" "No," said Lucy, reflecting, "I don't think he would miss--unless he was in too much of a hurry to hit." Mrs. Nugent looked quickly at her. "That is very clever of you. You have touched on his great difference from Father. He is awfully impatient." All this did Lucy a great deal of good. James thought that she had better call on Mrs. Nugent. He knew all about her. CHAPTER VIII AGAIN The second time was in late February, at the Opera: the _Walkuere_, of all operas in the world, where passion of the suddenest is seen on its most radiant spring morning. James, who was dreadfully bored by Wagner, and only went because it was the thing to do, and truly also because "a man must be seen with his wife," could not promise to be there, dressed, at such an unearthly hour as half-past six--James, I say, did not go with her, but vowed to be there "long before seven." That he undertook. So she went alone, and sat, as she always did, half hidden behind the curtain of her box on the second tier.