THE LUCK OF THE IRISH
and back again, from this crooked street to that, past old landmarks bristling with deeds of valor, William and his school-teacher wandered. After coming down from the echoing-galleries the two had drifted away from the others and gone investigating on their own account. It was impossible for her not to catch some of his enthusiasm for everything, the motley, picturesque Africans, the Tommies in their smart jackets, the swart, stocky Spaniards, the donkeys plodding across the neutral ground into Spain, the gray monsters in the harbor, the real Rock which appeared so peaceful and yet which they knew to be so sinisterly alive.
Frequently she heard him murmur, and perhaps he was quite unconscious that he spoke aloud: "And there is Gibraltar, and here is little old Willie Grogan!" She understood. A dream, which once had been numbered among the impossible things, had come true. And when he found the grave in the military cemetery—the grave of a granduncle of his father's—he held his chin higher and carried his shoulders a bit stiffer thereafter. He had now a proprietary interest in the Rock—blood of his blood had soaked the sparse soil of it.
No pride like that which William innocently took in this discovery is ever harmful. On the contrary, it is one of those sublime emotional tonics which revivifies manhood, renews the iron in the corpuscle, and puts the conscience in order.
She had some difficulty in preventing him from squandering his money upon useless gimcracks; but in spite of her vigilance he succeeded in buying
98
