"Not me! 'Twas many a year since I was on board a ship," said Mothereen. "Me and my man--Pat was his name--we had our honeymoon in the steerage. 'Twas out to the West we came, near to where we are now, which is why me heart is in the West always. But troubles fell on Pat in business, and a friend of his invited him to join in a new scheme, back East in New York. The fellow'd been left a house there, off Third Avenue, and with Pat to help in the expense of a start, furnishin', advertisin' and the like, accordin' to him, they could coin money takin' boarders. It sounded all right on paper, and so it might have been in practice, maybe, with Pat to manage and me to cook, if half the boarders hadn't slipped off without settlin' their bills. But that's what they did, the spalpeens. And if troubles had been black out West, they was black and blue in N'York! This was the time when Captain Garth came limpin' in out of hospital, with his boy hangin' onto his hand. He'd seen our advertisement in a paper, offerin' cheap board. The man looked like death--and he didn't look like pay. But sure, me heart opened to the pair of 'em at first sight! Ses I to meself, 'If I was to have a child, I'd want one the pattern o' _that_.'" "What happened then?" Marise wanted to know, when Mothereen paused for her thoughts to rush back to the past. "Just the things ye might suppose! We none of us had any luck. There was no more doin' for the inventions in the States than there'd been in England. The Captain left the child in my charge, and went to Washington. There he hung about the place till the last of his money was frittered away, and nothin' to show for it. But my, didn't that boy grow into me heart, those days when he was like me own? Four years old he was, and to look at him or hear him talk, you'd have said six! There came along a big wave of 'flu, the end of that hard winter, and my Pat and Captain Garth was both laid low with the sickness. Pat took it from the Captain, nursin' him--and within a week of each other they was dead. That's how me Johnny boy got to be me son." "You were a saint to adopt him, when his father caused your husband's death," said Marise. "_Saint_, is it? Wait till ye hear the rest of the story, and know what it was the boy did for me. Not much more than a baby he was, but with twice the understandin' of many a grown-up man I've met. He saw the way things were for me, with his wise little eyes, and he made up his mind to help when the time came. "I had to give up the house, I couldn't hold on. I sold up my bits of things, and took one room for the two of us, Johnny and me. I got some sewin' to do, but 'twas in a neighbourhood of poor folk, and there wasn't enough comin' in to keep bread in our mouths. What do you think that baby did then, darlin'? I'm sure _this_ is the part of the story he'd _never_ be tellin' ye!" "I can't imagine," said Marise.