And there's the proof of it."

He slapped the paper heartily with his hand. To Lady Corless, whose mind
was working rapidly, his reasoning seemed a little inconclusive. It even
struck her that an Irish republic, had such a thing really come into
being, might not have been able to offer the citizens the glorious
chance of a weekly pension of twenty-five shillings. But she was aware
that politics is a complex business in which she was not trained. She
said nothing. Her father explained his line of thought.

"If them fellows over in England," he said, "weren't terrible frightened
of the Sinn Feiners, would they be offering us the likes of that to keep
us quiet? Bedamn, but they would not. Nobody ever got a penny out of
an Englishman yet, without he'd frightened him first. And it's the
Sinn Feiners done that. There's the why and the wherefore of it to you.
Twenty-five shillings a week! It ought to be thirty shillings, so it
ought. But sure, twenty-five shillings is something, and I'd be in
favour of taking it, so I would. Let the people of Ireland take it, I
say, as an instalment of what's due to them, and what they'll get in the
latter end, please God!"

"Can you make out how a man's to get it?" said Lady Corless.

"Man!" said old Malone. "Man! No, but man and woman. There isn't a girl
in the country, let alone a boy, but what's entitled to it, and I'd like
to see the police or anyone else interfering with them getting it."

"Will it be paid out of the post office like the Old Age Pensions?" said
Lady Corless.

"I don't know will it," said her father, "but that way or some other way
it's bound to be paid, and all anyone has to do is to go over to what
they call the Labour Exchange, at Dunbeg, and say there's no work for
him where he lives. Then he'll get the money. It's what the young fellow
in that office is there for, is to give the money, and by damn if he
doesn't do it there'll be more heard about the matter!"

Old Malone, anxious to spread the good news, left the room and walked
down to the public house at the corner of the village street. Lady
Corless went into the kitchen and found her three youngest sisters
drinking tea. They sat on low stools before the fire and had a black
teapot with a broken spout standing on the hearth at their feet. The
tea in the pot was very black and strong. Lady Corless addressed them
solemnly.

"Katey-Ann," she said, "listen to me now, and let you be listening too,
Onnie, and le