a gratifying side to it, too. After all, he is our
king; and it's our own country, isn't it?

O'FLAHERTY. Well, sir, to you that have an estate in it, it would feel
like your country. But the divil a perch of it ever I owned. And as to
the king: God help him, my mother would have taken the skin off my back
if I'd ever let on to have any other king than Parnell.

SIR PEARCE [rising, painfully shocked]. Your mother! What are you
dreaming about, O'Flaherty? A most loyal woman. Always most loyal.
Whenever there is an illness in the Royal Family, she asks me every
time we meet about the health of the patient as anxiously as if it were
yourself, her only son.

O'FLAHERTY. Well, she's my mother; and I won't utter a word agen her.
But I'm not saying a word of lie when I tell you that that old woman is
the biggest kanatt from here to the cross of Monasterboice. Sure she's
the wildest Fenian and rebel, and always has been, that ever taught a
poor innocent lad like myself to pray night and morning to St Patrick
to clear the English out of Ireland the same as he cleared the snakes.
You'll be surprised at my telling you that now, maybe, Sir Pearce?

SIR PEARCE [unable to keep still, walking away from O'Flaherty].
Surprised! I'm more than surprised, O'Flaherty. I'm overwhelmed.
[Turning and facing him.] Are you--are you joking?

O'FLAHERTY. If you'd been brought up by my mother, sir, you'd know
better than to joke about her. What I'm telling you is the truth; and I
wouldn't tell it to you if I could see my way to get out of the fix I'll
be in when my mother comes here this day to see her boy in his glory,
and she after thinking all the time it was against the English I was
fighting.

SIR PEARCE. Do you mean to say you told her such a monstrous falsehood
as that you were fighting in the German army?

O'FLAHERTY. I never told her one word that wasn't the truth and nothing
but the truth. I told her I was going to fight for the French and for
the Russians; and sure who ever heard of the French or the Russians
doing anything to the English but fighting them? That was how it was,
sir. And sure the poor woman kissed me and went about the house singing
in her old cracky voice that the French was on the sea, and they'd be
here without delay, and the Orange will decay, says the Shan Van Vocht.

SIR PEARCE [sitting down again, exhausted by his feelings]. Well, I
never could have believed this. Never. What do you suppose will happen
whe