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SIR PEARCE

[touched]. Not at all, O’Flaherty. Not at all.

O’FLAHERTY

. Sure what’s the Cross to me, barring the little pension it carries? Do you think I don’t know that there’s hundreds of men as brave as me that never had the luck to get anything for their bravery but a curse from the sergeant, and the blame for the faults of them that ought to have been their betters? I’ve learnt more than you’d think, sir; for how would a gentleman like you know what a poor ignorant conceited creature I was when I went from here into the wide world as a soldier? What use is all the lying, and pretending, and humbugging, and letting on, when the day comes to you that your comrade is killed in the trench beside you, and you don’t as much as look round at him until you trip over his poor body, and then all you say is to ask why the hell the stretcher-bearers don’t take it out of the way. Why should I read the papers to be humbugged and lied to by them that had the cunning to stay at home and send me to fight for them? Don’t talk to me or to any soldier of the war being right. No war is right; and all the holy water that Father Quinlan ever blessed couldn’t make one right. There, sir! Now you know what O’Flaherty V.C. thinks; and you’re wiser so than the others that only knows what he done.

SIR PEARCE

[making the best of it, and turning goodhumoredly to him again]. Well, what you did was brave and manly, anyhow.

O’FLAHERTY

. God knows whether it was or not, better than you nor me, General. I hope He won’t be too hard on me for it, anyhow.

SIR PEARCE

[sympathetically]. Oh yes: we all have to think seriously sometimes, especially when we’re a little run down. I’m afraid we’ve been overworking you a bit over these recruiting meetings. However, we can knock off for the rest of the day; and tomorrow’s Sunday. I’ve had about as much as I can stand myself. [He looks at his watch.] It’s teatime. I wonder what’s keeping your mother.

O’FLAHERTY

. It’s nicely cocked up the old woman will be having tea at the same table as you, sir, instead of in the kitchen. She’ll be after dressing in the heighth of grandeur; and stop she will at every house on the way to show herself off and tell them where she’s going, and fill the whole parish with spite and envy. But sure, she shouldn’t keep you waiting, sir.

SIR PEARCE

. Oh, that’s all right: she must be indulged on an occasion like this. I’m sorry my wife is in London: she’d have been glad to welcome your mother.

O’FLAHERTY

. Sure, I know she would, sir. She was always a kind friend to the poor. Little her ladyship knew, God help her, the depth of divilment that was in us: we were like a play to her. You see, sir, she was English: that was how it was. We was to her what the Pathans and Senegalese was to me when I first seen them: I couldn’t think, somehow, that they were liars, and thieves, and backbiters, and drunkards, just like ourselves or any other Christians. Oh, her ladyship never knew all that was going on behind her back: how would she? When I was a weeshy child, she gave me the first penny I ever had in my hand; and I wanted to pray for her conversion that night the same as my mother made me pray for yours; and–

SIR PEARCE

[scandalized]. Do you mean to say that your mother made you pray for MY conversion?