e the
biscuit at that, you do. I'm a Owm Ruler, I am. Do you know why?

MATTHEW [equally contemptuous]. D'ye know, yourself?

HODSON. Yes I do. It's because I want a little attention paid to
my own country; and thet'll never be as long as your chaps are
ollerin at Wesminister as if nowbody mettered but your own
bloomin selves. Send em back to hell or C'naught, as good oul
English Cromwell said. I'm jast sick of Ireland. Let it gow. Cut
the cable. Make it a present to Germany to keep the oul Kyzer
busy for a while; and give poor owld England a chawnce: thets wot
I say.

MATTHEW [full of scorn for a man so ignorant as to be unable to
pronounce the word Connaught, which practically rhymes with
bonnet in Ireland, though in Hodson's dialect it rhymes with
untaught]. Take care we don't cut the cable ourselves some day,
bad scran to you! An tell me dhis: have yanny Coercion Acs in
England? Have yanny removables? Have you Dublin Castle to
suppress every newspaper dhat takes the part o your own counthry?

HODSON. We can beyave ahrselves withaht sich things.

MATTHEW. Bedad you're right. It'd only be waste o time to muzzle
a sheep. Here! where's me pig? God forgimme for talkin to a poor
ignorant craycher like you.

HODSON [grinning with good-humored malice, too convinced of his
own superiority to feel his withers wrung]. Your pig'll ave a
rare doin in that car, Paddy. Forty miles an ahr dahn that rocky
lane will strike it pretty pink, you bet.

MATTHEW [scornfully]. Hwy can't you tell a raisonable lie when
you're about it? What horse can go forty mile an hour?

HODSON. Orse! Wy, you silly oul rotten it's not a orse it's a
mowtor. Do you suppose Tom Broadbent would gow off himself to
arness a orse?

MATTHEW [in consternation]. Holy Moses! Don't tell me it's the
ingine he wants to take me on.

HODSON. Wot else?

MATTHEW. Your sowl to Morris Kelly! why didn't you tell me that
before? The divil an ingine he'll get me on this day. [His ear
catches an approaching teuf-teuf] Oh murdher! it's comin afther
me: I hear the puff puff of it. [He runs away through the gate,
much to Hodson's amusement. The noise of the motor ceases; and
Hodson, anticipating Broadbent's return, throws off the
politician and recomposes himself as a valet. Broadbent and Larry
come through the shrubbery. Hodson moves aside to the gate].

BROADBENT. Where is Mr Haffigan? Has he gone for the pig?

HODSON. Bolted, sir! Afraid of the motor, sir.

B