Sir James had heard of it. It was the subject of many notes and reports
in his Ministry.

"But this isn't the 1st of next month," he said.

"It is not," said the driver. "It's no more than the 15th of this month.
But the way I'm placed at present, it wouldn't be near so convenient to
me to be striking next month as it is to be striking now. There's talk
of moving me off this line and putting me on to the engine that does be
running into Athlone with the night mail; and it's to-morrow the change
is to be made. Now I needn't tell you that Athlone's a mighty long way
from where we are this minute."

He paused and looked at Sir James with an intelligent smile.

"My wife lives in the little house beyond there," he said pointing out
of the window to the cottage. "And what I said to myself was this: If
I am to be striking--which I've no great wish to do--but if it must
be--and seemingly it must--I may as well do it in the convenientest
place I can; for as long as a man strikes the way he's told, there can't
be a word said to him; and anyway the 1st of next month or the 15th of
this month, what's the differ? Isn't one day as good as another?"

He evidently felt that his explanation was sufficient and satisfactory.
He rose to his feet and opened the door of the compartment.
"I'm sorry now," he said, "if I'm causing any inconvenience to a
gentleman like yourself. But what can I do? I offered to leave you
behind at Finnabeg, but you wouldn't stay. Anyway the night's warm
and if you stretch yourself on the seat there you won't know it till
morning, and then I'll bring you over another cup of tea so as you won't
be hungry. It's a twenty-four hour strike, so it is; and I won't be
moving on out of this before two o'clock or may be half past. But what
odds? The kind of place Dunadea is, a day or two doesn't matter one way
or another, and if it was the day after to-morrow in place of to-morrow
you got there it would be the same thing in the latter end."

He climbed out of the compartment as he spoke and stumped back through
the rain to his cottage. Sir James was left wondering how the people
of Dunadea managed to conduct the business of life when one day was
the same to them as another and the loss of a day now and then did not
matter. He was quite certain that the loss of a day mattered a great
deal to him, his position being what it was. He wondered what Miss Molly
Dennison would think when he failed to appear at her father's h