Miss Caroline was again the first to say something. She commanded him to speak up. I was setting her soup down in front of her—I’d made green pea with egg dumplings that night—and I almost spilled it because her voice was so demanding and loud.

Pat looked over at her. He covered his left eye with his left hand, and looked at her some more.

The other boarders weren’t sure what to do or whether they could begin eating. Soup, in summer or not, wasn’t half as nice if it was lukewarm.

Pat cleared his throat and said in a voice loud enough for Miss Caroline to hear, “I also answer to Patrick Hearn.”

The table erupted with welcomes and greetings for “Patrick Hearn.” Mr. Bean said that the young man would soon be joining his place of employment as a proofreader. Young Mr. Hearn is now the private secretary to the city’s head librarian, Mr. Bean added, in a tone that said that Patrick Hearn was worth a second glance.

The younger men at Mrs. Haslam’s would call him “Pat.” That was what I called him too, when we became acquainted.

Mr. Wheeler, who wasn’t at all young and who worked as a clerk at a tobacco warehouse—he smelled of cigars though he never smoked—greeted Pat the next morning at the breakfast table as “Paddy.” Pat refused to acknowledge the man, as if he hadn’t heard a word of what Mr. Wheeler was saying to him. Mr. Wheeler didn’t seem to notice and kept on talking. In between bites of his coddled eggs, Mr. Wheeler said that he was barely out of the cradle when “your people”—Mr. Wheeler meant the Irish, but Pat didn’t look up from the newspaper that he was reading—started coming in droves to Cincinnati. They were a sorry lot back then, Paddy. Their children roamed the streets like strays, Mr. Wheeler continued. Not a one of them in school. The Civil War changed them for the better. Every last man and boy fought for Ohio’s Tenth, along with us native-borns. That war gave them discipline, Paddy. It taught them hard work. That is what I say, whenever I hear people speaking ill about the Irish; that they are taking over the city’s police force and fire brigade and such. Who better suited than their kind for these jobs is what I say, Paddy.

Every time Mr. Wheeler said “Paddy,” Pat would turn a page of the newspaper, rustling it like a dried cornstalk.