ave some peace and quiet in her old age?

SIR PEARCE [troubled in his conscience]. Well, it's not my affair, of
course, O'Flaherty. But hadn't you better talk to Father Quinlan about
it?

O'FLAHERTY. Talk to Father Quinlan, is it! Do you know what Father
Quinlan says to me this very morning?

SIR PEARCE. Oh, you've seen him already, have you? What did he say?

O'FLAHERTY. He says "You know, don't you," he says, "that it's your
duty, as a Christian and a good son of the Holy Church, to love your
enemies?" he says. "I know it's my juty as a soldier to kill them," I
says. "That's right, Dinny," he says: "quite right. But," says he, "you
can kill them and do them a good turn afterward to show your love for
them" he says; "and it's your duty to have a mass said for the souls of
the hundreds of Germans you say you killed," says he; "for many and many
of them were Bavarians and good Catholics," he says. "Is it me that must
pay for masses for the souls of the Boshes?" I says. "Let the King of
England pay for them," I says; "for it was his quarrel and not mine."

SIR PEARCE [warmly]. It is the quarrel of every honest man and true
patriot, O'Flaherty. Your mother must see that as clearly as I do.
After all, she is a reasonable, well disposed woman, quite capable of
understanding the right and the wrong of the war. Why can't you explain
to her what the war is about?

O'FLAHERTY. Arra, sir, how the divil do I know what the war is about?

SIR PEARCE [rising again and standing over him]. What! O'Flaherty: do
you know what you are saying? You sit there wearing the Victoria Cross
for having killed God knows how many Germans; and you tell me you don't
know why you did it!

O'FLAHERTY. Asking your pardon, Sir Pearce, I tell you no such thing. I
know quite well why I kilt them, because I was afeard that, if I didn't,
they'd kill me.

SIR PEARCE [giving it up, and sitting down again]. Yes, yes, of course;
but have you no knowledge of the causes of the war? of the interests
at stake? of the importance--I may almost say--in fact I will say--the
sacred right for which we are fighting? Don't you read the papers?

O'FLAHERTY. I do when I can get them. There's not many newsboys crying
the evening paper in the trenches. They do say, Sir Pearce, that
we shall never beat the Boshes until we make Horatio Bottomley Lord
Leftnant of England. Do you think that's true, sir?

SIR PEARCE. Rubbish, man! there's no Lord Lieutenant in England: th