expensive, so you need not worry about
that. And now, Doyle, unless there's anything else you want to
settle with me at once, I think I'll write our invitation to the
Lord-Lieutenant."

"It would be well if you did," said Doyle, "so as we'd know whether he's
coming or not."

"Oh, he'll come. If he boggles at it at all I'll go up to Dublin and see
him myself. A short verbal explanation---- We'll let him choose his own
date."

Doyle lit his pipe and walked back to the hotel. He found Thady
Gallagher waiting for him in his private room.

"What's this I'm after hearing," said Gallagher, "about the
Lord-Lieutenant?"

"He's coming down here," said Doyle, "to open the new statue."

He spoke firmly, for he detected a note of displeasure in the tone in
which Thady Gallagher asked this question.

"I don't know," said Gallagher, "would I be altogether in favour of
that."

"And why not? Mustn't there be someone to open it? And mightn't it as
well be him as another?"

"It might not as well be him."

"Speak out, Thady, what have you against the man?"

"I'm a good Nationalist," said Gallagher, "and I always was, and my
father before me was the same."

"I'm that myself," said Doyle.

"And I'm opposed to flunkeyism, whether it's the flunkeyism of the rent
office or------"

"Well and if you are, isn't it the same with all of us?"

"What I say is this," said Gallagher, "as long as the people of Ireland
is denied the inalienable right of managing their own affairs I'd be
opposed to welcoming into our midst the emissaries of Dublin Castle, and
I'd like to know, so I would, what the people of this locality will be
saying to the man that's false to his principles and goes back on the
dearest aspirations of our hearts?"

He glared quite fiercely while he spoke, but Doyle remained serenely
unimpressed.

"Talk sense now, Thady," he said. "Nobody'll say a word without it'd be
yourself and you making a speech at the time. It's for the good of the
town that we're getting him down here."

"What good?" said Gallagher, "tell me that now. What good will come of
the like?"

Doyle was unwilling to confide the whole pier scheme to Gallagher. He
contented himself with a vague reply.

"There's many a thing," he said, "that would be for the good of the
town that might be got if it was represented properly to the
Lord-Lieutenant."

"If I thought that," said Gallagher, "I might----"

He was in a difficult position. He did not w