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O’FLAHERTY

. Holiday, is it? I’d give five shillings to be back in the trenches for the sake of a little rest and quiet. I never knew what hard work was till I took to recruiting. What with the standing on my legs all day, and the shaking hands, and the making speeches, and–what’s worse–the listening to them and the calling for cheers for king and country, and the saluting the flag till I’m stiff with it, and the listening to them playing God Save the King and Tipperary, and the trying to make my eyes look moist like a man in a picture book, I’m that bet that I hardly get a wink of sleep. I give you my word, Sir Pearce, that I never heard the tune of Tipperary in my life till I came back from Flanders; and already it’s drove me to that pitch of tiredness of it that when a poor little innocent slip of a boy in the street the other night drew himself up and saluted and began whistling it at me, I clouted his head for him, God forgive me.

SIR PEARCE

[soothingly]. Yes, yes: I know. I know. One does get fed up with it: I’ve been dog tired myself on parade many a time. But still, you know, there’s a gratifying side to it, too. After all, he is our king; and it’s our own country, isn’t it?

O’FLAHERTY

. Well, sir, to you that have an estate in it, it would feel like your country. But the divil a perch of it ever I owned. And as to the king: God help him, my mother would have taken the skin off my back if I’d ever let on to have any other king than Parnell.

SIR PEARCE

[rising, painfully shocked]. Your mother! What are you dreaming about, O’Flaherty? A most loyal woman. Always most loyal. Whenever there is an illness in the Royal Family, she asks me every time we meet about the health of the patient as anxiously as if it were yourself, her only son.

O’FLAHERTY

. Well, she’s my mother; and I won’t utter a word agen her. But I’m not saying a word of lie when I tell you that that old woman is the biggest kanatt from here to the cross of Monasterboice. Sure she’s the wildest Fenian and rebel, and always has been, that ever taught a poor innocent lad like myself to pray night and morning to St Patrick to clear the English out of Ireland the same as he cleared the snakes. You’ll be surprised at my telling you that now, maybe, Sir Pearce?

SIR PEARCE

[unable to keep still, walking away from O’Flaherty]. Surprised! I’m more than surprised, O’Flaherty. I’m overwhelmed. [Turning and facing him.] Are you–are you joking?

O’FLAHERTY

. If you’d been brought up by my mother, sir, you’d know better than to joke about her. What I’m telling you is the truth; and I wouldn’t tell it to you if I could see my way to get out of the fix I’ll be in when my mother comes here this day to see her boy in his glory, and she after thinking all the time it was against the English I was fighting.

SIR PEARCE

. Do you mean to say you told her such a monstrous falsehood as that you were fighting in the German army?

O’FLAHERTY

. I never told her one word that wasn’t the truth and nothing but the truth. I told her I was going to fight for the French and for the Russians; and sure who ever heard of the French or the Russians doing anything to the English but fighting them? That was how it was, sir. And sure the poor woman kissed me and went about the house singing in her old cracky voice that the French was on the sea, and they’d be here without delay, and the Orange will decay, says the Shan Van Vocht.