A return voyage for me—for us both, in a way—Mrs. Brenane, the nanny corrected the Old Lady. I was Dublin born, and Danielo came into this world at the border of the Irish and Celtic seas. He was too eager to see the world, weren’t you, Danielo? It was a long voyage back to Ireland and the seas were rougher this time, but he was such a good soldier, the nanny cooed. She gave the little boy a kiss, one on each of his ruddy cheeks.

Pat remembered kisses on both cheeks. Pat heard “the seas” and felt envy about that as well. His father was a “good soldier,” and he went on many a “long voyage.”

Pat regarded the little boy with new interest and saw that he had tiny gold rings in his earlobes. Pat reached up and felt the dimples in his own lobes and remembered that he had worn them too. He then turned his attention toward the nanny Elesa. Pat, for a brief blissful moment, thought it was his mother. Her large dark eyes, ripe damson plums; her hair full of waves, a night sea without a moon, Pat said. He took in a deep hopeful breath, but there was not a trace of lavender in the room, and he knew.

The little boy began to whimper and cling to the nanny’s skirt. The nanny bent down and whispered something encouraging—possibly even loving, Pat suspected—into Danielo’s ear, and the little boy toddled over and sat down on the rug next to Pat. The little boy soon picked up one of Pat’s toy soldiers—precious to Pat, as they were the few toys that his father had given him—and ran off with it. Pat chased after the little thief.

The nanny Elesa and the Old Lady, who were seated and conversing nearby, must have thought that the Hearn brothers were at play, and they ignored the sudden movements and the waving of limbs.

The boys circled each other until the little thief unwisely headed toward the landing of the grand staircase, which ran through the center of the manor house, like a spine broken and twisted. Pat tried to push the little thief down the polished steps. The little thief dropped the toy soldier and clung onto a banister with both hands, while letting out the high-pitched shriek of a small animal before slaughter. The nanny came running, and the little thief let go of the banister and clung to her skirt instead. The Old Lady, unused to the din, ordered the nanny to take James Daniel away. The Boy is unfit to have company this morning, the Old Lady declared.

The nanny Elesa had brought with her gifts for Pat, a box of sticky, odd-tasting sweetmeats made of sesame seeds and a cloth bag full of seashells of varying shapes and sizes. At the bottom of the bag of shells were a handful of sand and a thick envelope, the latter the Old Lady took from him when he, in his boyish excitement, had dumped the bag’s entire contents all over the nursery’s floor.