hat about Ireland ... and
Germans, too!..."

He nodded his head. "It's a madness, this nationality," he said, "but
you can't get a cure for it. Even I feel it!"

"Quinny!"

"Yes, Mary!"

There was a nervous note in her voice. She got up, so that she was on
her knees, and fingered the lapels of his coat.

"Quinny!" she said again, and he waited for her to proceed. "I ... I
want us to get married ... soon! You'll probably go into the Army ...
nobody could go on feeling as you do, and not go in ... and I'd like us
to ... to have had some time together ... before you go. I don't want to
be married to you just ... just a day or two before you go. I ... I want
to have lived with you and to ... to have taken care of your house ...
with you in it!..."

He folded her in his arms.

"You will, Quinny?" she said.

"Yes," he answered.

THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER

1

They were to be married as soon as Lent was over. Mrs. Graham, reluctant
to lose Mary, had pleaded for delay, urging that Ballymartin was so far
from Boveyhaven that she would seldom see her. "Two days' post," she
protested.

"But you'll come and stay with us, mother," Mary declared, "and we'll
come and stay with you!"

It would be quite easy for Henry to come to Devonshire, for he could
carry his work about with him. Then Mrs. Graham had yielded to them, and
it was settled that the marriage was to take place at the beginning of
May. Neither Mary nor he had spoken again of the question of enlistment.
She had said all that was in her mind about it, and what followed was
for him to decide.

He went back to Ballymartin. There were things to be done at home in
preparation for the coming of a bride. The house had not known a
mistress since his mother's death, and his father had been too
preoccupied with his agricultural experiments to bother greatly about
the interior of his house. So long as he could find things more or less
where he had left them, Mr. Quinn had been content.

"You won't overhaul it too much, Quinny?" Mary said to him, "because I'd
like to do some of that!"

He had promised that he would do no more than was immediately necessary;
and then he went.

"I shall have to go to Dublin," he had told her. "There'll be a lot of
stuff to settle with lawyers!" Her settlement, for example. "I'll go
home first, then on to Dublin, and then back here. I shall get to
Boveyhayne just after Easter!"

2

Mr. Quinn had not greatly bothered about