d ferocity] Look at me! Do I look sleek?

HODSON [sadly]. I wish I ad your ealth: you look as hard as
nails. I suffer from an excess of uric acid.

MATTHEW. Musha what sort o disease is zhouragassid? Didjever
suffer from injustice and starvation? Dhat's the Irish disease.
It's aisy for you to talk o sufferin, an you livin on the fat o
the land wid money wrung from us.

HODSON [Coolly]. Wots wrong with you, old chap? Has ennybody been
doin ennything to you?

MATTHEW. Anythin timme! Didn't your English masther say that the
blood biled in him to hear the way they put a rint on me for the
farm I made wid me own hans, and turned me out of it to give it
to Billy Byrne?

HODSON. Ow, Tom Broadbent's blood boils pretty easy over
ennything that appens out of his own country. Don't you be taken
in by my ole man, Paddy.

MATTHEW [indignantly]. Paddy yourself! How dar you call me Paddy?

HODSON [unmoved]. You just keep your hair on and listen to me.
You Irish people are too well off: that's what's the matter with
you. [With sudden passion] You talk of your rotten little farm
because you made it by chuckin a few stownes dahn a hill! Well,
wot price my grenfawther, I should like to know, that fitted up a
fuss clawss shop and built up a fuss clawss drapery business in
London by sixty years work, and then was chucked aht of it on is
ed at the end of is lease withaht a penny for his goodwill. You
talk of evictions! you that cawn't be moved until you've
run up eighteen months rent. I once ran up four weeks in Lambeth
when I was aht of a job in winter. They took the door off its
inges and the winder aht of its sashes on me, and gave my wife
pnoomownia. I'm a widower now. [Between his teeth] Gawd! when I
think of the things we Englishmen av to put up with, and hear you
Irish hahlin abaht your silly little grievances, and see the way
you makes it worse for us by the rotten wages you'll come over
and take and the rotten places you'll sleep in, I jast feel that
I could take the oul bloomin British awland and make you a
present of it, jast to let you find out wot real ardship's like.

MATTHEW [starting up, more in scandalized incredulity than in
anger]. D'ye have the face to set up England agen Ireland for
injustices an wrongs an disthress an sufferin?

HODSON [with intense disgust and contempt, but with Cockney
coolness]. Ow, chuck it, Paddy. Cheese it. You danno wot ardship
is over ere: all you know is ah to ahl abaht it. You tak