d reeled a little under this sudden onslaught on his beliefs.

"Well," said Mr. Quinn. "Is that your notion of progress, Henry! Makin'
fine linen out of healthy girls?"

"No, father, of course not. Only!..."

Mr. Quinn stood up, and caught hold of his son's shoulder. "Come over to
the window, Henry!" he said, and they walked across the room together.
"Look out there," he said, pointing towards the fields that stretched to
the foot of the hills. "That's fine, isn't it!" he exclaimed.

"It's very beautiful, father," Henry replied, looking across the fields
of corn and clover and the pastures where the silken-sided cattle
browsed and flocks of sheep cropped the short grass.

"It's _land_, Henry!" said Mr. Quinn, proudly. "You can do without
machines in the long run, but you can't do without _that_!"

3

"An' what do you think a mill-owner'd make of it, Henry!" Mr. Quinn said
as they stood there gazing on the richness of the earth. Near at hand,
they could hear the sound of a lawn-mower, leisurely worked by William
Henry Matier, and while they waited for him to come into view, a great
fat thrush flew down from a tree and seized a snail and beat it against
a stone until its shell was broken....

"I suppose he'd spoil it, father!" Henry answered.

"Spoil it!" Mr. Quinn exclaimed. "Damn it, Henry, he'd desecrate it!
He'd tear up my cornfields and meadows and put factories and mills in
their place! That's what he'd do!" He turned sideways and leant against
the lintel of the window so that he was looking at his son. "There was a
fellow came to see me once," he said, "from London. A speculatin' chap,
an' he wanted me to put capital into a scheme he had on. Do you know
what sort of a scheme it was, Henry?"

"No, father!"

"He wanted to develop the mineral resources of the County Wicklow, an'
he wanted me to lend him money to do it. He said that some Germans had
surveyed the whole district, an' there was an immense fortune just
waitin' to be torn out of the earth.... I could hardly keep my feet off
his backside! 'Do you want to turn Glendalough into a place like
Wigan?' I said to him. 'It's all in the interests of progress,' says
he.... No, I didn't give him any of my money. I was as civil to him as I
could be, an' he never knew how near he was to his death that day...."

Mr. Quinn's anger evaporated, and he began to laugh to himself as he
thought of the difficulty he had had in restraining his rage against the
spec