"Well," said Hennessey, "you mayn't want to go to parties now, but you will when you are a bit older. However, you can please yourself--Do you want to go to America?"
"I do," said Phyl. "It's not that I want to leave you, but there is something that tells me I have got to go. When I read the letter first this morning, I was delighted to think that Mr. Pinckney was not still angry with me, and I liked the idea of the change, for Dublin is a bit dreary after Kilgobbin and--and well, I _will_ say it--I don't care for some of the people I have met in Dublin. But since then a new feeling has come over me. I think it came as I was walking down here to the office. It's a feeling as if something were pulling me ever so slightly, yet still pulling me from over there. My father said that there was more of mother in me than him. I remember he said that once--well, perhaps it's that. She came from over there."
The thing was settled definitely that night, Mrs. Hennessey resisting the idea at first, more, one might have fancied from her talk, because the idea was anti-national than from love of Phyl, though, as a matter of fact, she was fond enough of the girl.
"It's what's left Ireland what it is," went on the good lady. "Cripples and lunatics, that's all that's left of us with your emigration; all the good blood of Ireland flowing away from her and not a drop, scarcely, coming back."
"I'll come back," said Phyl, "you need not fear about that--some day."
"Ay, some day," said Mrs. Hennessey, and stared into the fire. Then the spirit moving her, she began to discant on things past and people vanished.
Synge, and Oscar Wilde and Willie Wilde, who was the real genius of the family, only his genius "stuck in him somehow and wouldn't come out." She passed from people who had vanished to places that had changed, and only stopped when the servant came in with the announcement that supper was ready.
Then at supper, lo and behold! she discussed the going away of Phyl, as though it were a matter arranged and done with and carrying her full consent and approval.
During the weeks following, Phyl's impending journey kept Mrs. Hennessey busy in a spasmodic way. One might have fancied from the preparations and lists of things necessary that the girl was off to the wilds of New Guinea or some region equally destitute of shops.