Mu, said Kelly Dahl. On one level mu means only yes, but on a deeper level of Zen it was often used by the master when the acolyte asked a stupid, unanswerable or wrongheaded question such as Does a dog have the Buddha-nature? The Master would answer only, Mu, meaning—I say yes but mean no, but the actual answer is: Unask the question.

Yet at the same time he detected much of this same cheerfulness throughout the ship and something not very far from apparent unconcern, even in so atrabilious a soul as Killick.

When he says about his wife of more than fifty years, Whatever Maxine wants, Maxine gets, he's not making a side-handed comment about their marriage.

I spose my mumʼs always been at home.