rady. "A Deputy-Lieutenant!
Nothing could be more respectable than that. You're only a J.P.
yourself, and I don't believe you'll ever be anything more. You can't
afford to turn up your nose at a Deputy-Lieutenant. We shan't be doing
any injury to the General's reputation by allowing him to be represented
by a man of high position, most likely of good family, who was at all
events supposed to be well off before he died."

"I wasn't thinking of the General's reputation," said the Major. "I
don't care a hang----"

"I don't see that we are bound to consider the feelings of the
Deputy-Lieutenant," said Dr. O'Grady. "After all, if a man deliberately
leads his relatives to suppose that he is rich enough to afford a statue
in a cathedral and then turns out to be too poor to pay for it, he
doesn't deserve much consideration."

"I wouldn't cross the road," said Doyle, "to do a good turn to a man
that let my nephew in the way that fellow did. For let me tell you,
gentlemen, that statue would have been a serious loss to him if----"

"I'm not thinking of him or Doyle's nephew either," said the Major.
"I don't know who that Deputy-Lieutenant was, and I don't care if his
statue was stuck up in every market town in Ireland."

"If you're not thinking of the General," said the doctor, "and if you're
not thinking of the Deputy-Lieutenant, what on earth are you grumbling
about?"

"I'm grumbling, as you call it," said the Major, "about the utterly
intolerable absurdity of the whole thing. Can't you see it? You can of
course, but you won't. Look here, Father McCormack, you're a man of some
sense and decency of feeling. Can we possibly ask the Lord-Lieutenant to
come here and unveil a statue of General John Regan--whoever he was--when
all we've got is a statue of some other man? Quite possibly the
Lord-Lieutenant may have known that Deputy-Lieutenant personally, and if
he recognises the statue where shall we be?"

"There's something in what the Major says," said Father McCormack. "I'll
not deny there's something in what he says."

"There isn't," said Dr. O'Grady. "Excuse my contradicting you flatly,
Father McCormack, but there really isn't. We all know Doyle, and we
respect him; but I put it to you now, Father McCormack, I put it to any
member of the committee: Is Doyle likely to have a nephew who'd be able
to make a statue that anybody would recognise?"

"There's something in that," said Father McCormack. "I'm not well up
in statu