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MRS O’FLAHERTY

. If you wanted to fight, why couldn’t you fight in the German army?

O’FLAHERTY

. Because they only get a penny a day.

MRS O’FLAHERTY

. Well, and if they do itself, isn’t there the French army?

O’FLAHERTY

. They only get a hapenny a day.

MRS O’FLAHERTY

[much dashed]. Oh murder! They must be a mean lot, Dinny.

O’FLAHERTY

[sarcastic]. Maybe you’d have me in the Turkish army, and worship the heathen Mahomet that put a corn in his ear and pretended it was a message from the heavens when the pigeon come to pick it out and eat it. I went where I could get the biggest allowance for you; and little thanks I get for it!

MRS O’FLAHERTY

. Allowance, is it! Do you know what the thieving blackguards did on me? They came to me and they says, “Was your son a big eater?” they says. “Oh, he was that,” says I: “ten shillings a week wouldn’t keep him.” Sure I thought the more I said the more they’d give me. “Then,” says they, “that’s ten shillings a week off your allowance,” they says, “because you save that by the king feeding him.” “Indeed!” says I: “I suppose if I’d six sons, you’d stop three pound a week from me, and make out that I ought to pay you money instead of you paying me.” “There’s a fallacy in your argument,” they says.

O’FLAHERTY

. A what?

MRS O’FLAHERTY

. A fallacy: that’s the word he said. I says to him, “It’s a Pharisee I’m thinking you mean, sir; but you can keep your dirty money that your king grudges a poor old widow; and please God the English will be bet yet for the deadly sin of oppressing the poor”; and with that I shut the door in his face.

O’FLAHERTY

[furious]. Do you tell me they knocked ten shillings off you for my keep?

MRS O’FLAHERTY

[soothing him]. No, darlint: they only knocked off half a crown. I put up with it because I’ve got the old age pension; and they know very well I’m only sixty-two; so I’ve the better of them by half a crown a week anyhow.

O’FLAHERTY

. It’s a queer way of doing business. If they’d tell you straight out what they was going to give you, you wouldn’t mind; but if there was twenty ways of telling the truth and only one way of telling a lie, the Government would find it out. It’s in the nature of governments to tell lies.

Teresa Driscoll, a parlor maid, comes from the house,

TERESA

. You’re to come up to the drawing-room to have your tea, Mrs. O’Flaherty.

MRS O’FLAHERTY

. Mind you have a sup of good black tea for me in the kitchen afterwards, acushla. That washy drawing-room tea will give me the wind if I leave it on my stomach. [She goes into the house, leaving the two young people alone together.]

O’FLAHERTY

. Is that yourself, Tessie? And how are you?

TERESA

. Nicely, thank you. And how’s yourself?

O’FLAHERTY

. Finely, thank God. [He produces a gold chain.] Look what I’ve brought you, Tessie.

TERESA

[shrinking]. Sure I don’t like to touch it, Denny. Did you take it off a dead man?

O’FLAHERTY

. No: I took it off a live one; and thankful he was to me to be alive and kept a prisoner in ease and comfort, and me left fighting in peril of my life.

TERESA

[taking it]. Do you think it’s real gold, Denny?

O’FLAHERTY

. It’s real German gold, anyhow.

TERESA

. But German silver isn’t real, Denny.