"That's the name. It's a demented mad place this. Such traffic! Worse nor Belfast on the fair-day!"
"It's like that every day, Mrs. MacDermott!" Hinde interjected.
"What bothers me," she went on, "is how ever you get to know your neighbours!"
"We don't get to know them," Hinde replied. "I've lived in this house for several years, but I don't know the names of the people on either side of it!"
"My God," said Mrs. MacDermott, "what sort of people are you at all! Are you all fell out with each other?"
"I wouldn't live in this place for the wide world," she exclaimed. "And you," she continued turning to her son, "could come here where you know nobody from a place where you knew everybody. The world's queer! What was that water I passed on the way out?..."
Hinde smiled at John. "So you've learned to call it the river, have you? Mrs. Hinde, in this town we always talk as if there were only one river in the world. A Londoner always says he's going up the river or down the river or on the river. He always speaks of it as the river. He never speaks of it as the Thames. In Belfast, you speak of the Lagan ... never of the river. The same in Dublin. They speak of the Liffey ... never of the river. John's become a Londoner. He knows the proper way to speak of the Thames!"
"London seems to be full of very conceited and unneighbourly people," Mrs. MacDermott said.
John demanded information of his mother. How were Uncle William and Mr. Cairnduff and the minister and Willie Logan?...
"His wife's got a child," Mrs. MacDermott replied severely.
"A boy, and the spit of his father, God help him. Thon lad Logan'll come to no good. Aggie's courting hard. Some fellow from Belfast that travels in drapery. She told me to remember her to you!"
Hinde rose to leave them. "You'll have a lot to say to each other, and I'm tired," he explained, as he went off to bed.
"I like that man," said Mrs. MacDermott when he had gone. "And now tell me about this girl you've got. Are you in earnest?"
"Yes, ma!" John answered, using the word "ma," now that he was alone with his mother.
"I hope so. She hasn't said definitely yet, but I think she will!"
"Who is she? Moore you said her name was. That's an Irish name!"
"But she's not Irish. She's English. Her father was a clergyman, but he's dead. So is her mother. She has hardly any friends!"