at was like a flame from a
blow-pipe! You'd say he thought I was going to steal the house!"

"I expect he did, too," said Larry, "especially if he thought that you
were a pal of mine. He hates me like blazes. He's one of those damned
Orangemen. I say, do you remember that thing in The Spirit of the
Nation, 'Orange and Green will carry the Day'? I bet old Evans would
rather lose, any day, than be 'linked in his might' with a Papist like
you or me! It's a most extraordinary thing how religion plays the
devil with Ireland!"

There are certain standard truisms that must be rediscovered by each
successive generation (possibly because they have bored the preceding
one to extinction), and Larry was of the age at which truisms reveal
themselves as new ideas, and sing and shine with the radiancy of
morning stars. He was also young enough, and just sufficiently
interested in religion, to find it exciting to denounce it. The
fervour of his indictment lifted him from his chair, and he stood,
with the evening light on his hot face, enjoying his theme, and his
audience.

"I stayed with some people in England last holidays, friends of my
people's; Protestants they were, too--Sour-faces,' as the 'Leader'
calls them!--and they didn't give a blow what religion I was! That was
_my_ affair, they thought--and so it was, too! Not like this
crowd here--I don't mean my _own_ people, you know," he added
hastily, "they're all right!"

"Oh, I'm sure!" said Barty, in instant assent.

"I hate England, of course," continued the student of The Spirit of
the Nation, hurriedly, "but I must say I get sick of this eternal
blackguarding of Catholics by Protestants, and Protestants by
Catholics--"

"Ah, they don't mean it half the time!" put in Barty, pacifically;
"it's just a trick they have!"

"Well, I don't care," said Larry, who didn't like being interrupted,
with a fling of his head; "they shouldn't do it! I hear people
shutting up when I come into the room--just as if I didn't jolly well
know they were abusing the priests or something like that. And if they
only knew it, _I_ don't care a curse how much they abuse them!"

He took an angry pull at his cigarette, glaring at the unoffending
Barty. "''Tisn't the man I respects, 'tis the office!' That's what
Mrs. Twomey said, when I was chaffing her for dragging gravel up from
the river to put in front of her house, because the priest, whom she
loathes, was going to have a 'station' there!"

T