gently pipeclayed overnight and watching the docile horses pulling
a tramload of business people up the hill. All the branches of the tall
trees which lined the mall were gay with little light green leaves and
the sunlight slanted through them on to the water. The granite stone of
the bridge was beginning to be warm and I began to pat it with my hands
in time to an air in my head. I was very happy.

When I had been sitting there for five or ten minutes I saw Mahony's
grey suit approaching. He came up the hill, smiling, and clambered
up beside me on the bridge. While we were waiting he brought out
the catapult which bulged from his inner pocket and explained some
improvements which he had made in it. I asked him why he had brought it
and he told me he had brought it to have some gas with the birds. Mahony
used slang freely, and spoke of Father Butler as Old Bunser. We waited
on for a quarter of an hour more but still there was no sign of Leo
Dillon. Mahony, at last, jumped down and said:

"Come along. I knew Fatty'd funk it."

"And his sixpence...?" I said.

"That's forfeit," said Mahony. "And so much the better for us--a bob and
a tanner instead of a bob."

We walked along the North Strand Road till we came to the Vitriol Works
and then turned to the right along the Wharf Road. Mahony began to play
the Indian as soon as we were out of public sight. He chased a crowd
of ragged girls, brandishing his unloaded catapult and, when two ragged
boys began, out of chivalry, to fling stones at us, he proposed that we
should charge them. I objected that the boys were too small and so we
walked on, the ragged troop screaming after us: "Swaddlers!
Swaddlers!" thinking that we were Protestants because Mahony, who was
dark-complexioned, wore the silver badge of a cricket club in his cap.
When we came to the Smoothing Iron we arranged a siege; but it was a
failure because you must have at least three. We revenged ourselves on
Leo Dillon by saying what a funk he was and guessing how many he would
get at three o'clock from Mr. Ryan.

We came then near the river. We spent a long time walking about the
noisy streets flanked by high stone walls, watching the working of
cranes and engines and often being shouted at for our immobility by the
drivers of groaning carts. It was noon when we reached the quays and as
all the labourers seemed to be eating their lunches, we bought two big
currant buns and sat down to eat them on some metal pip