about Dublin were the dirt and the want of taxicabs.”

A dead silence followed this remark.

Never tell an Irishman that Dublin is dirty.

Hennessey was dumb, and as for Phyl, she knew now that she hated this man.

“Of course,” went on the other, “it’s a fine old city and I’m not sure that I would alter it or even brush it up. I should think it’s pretty much the same to-day as when Lever wrote of it. It’s a survival 19 of the past, like Nuremberg. All the same, one doesn’t want to live in a survival of the past—does one?”

19

“I’ve lived there a good many years,” said Hennessey; “and I’ve managed to survive it. It’s not Chicago, of course; it’s just Dublin, and it doesn’t pretend to be anything else.”

“Just so,” said Pinckney. He felt that he had put his foot in it; recalling his own lightly spoken words he felt shocked at his want of tact, and he was casting about for something to say about the sacred city of a friendly nature but not too fulsome, when Byrne opened the door and announced that dinner was served.

20

CHAPTER III

Phyl led the way and they crossed the hall to the dining-room, a room oak-panelled like the library and warm with the light of fire and candles.

Once upon a time there had been high doings in this sombre room, hunt breakfasts and dinners, rousing songs, laughter, and the toasting of pretty women—now dust and ashes.

Here highly coloured gentlemen had slept the sleep of the just, under the table, whilst the ladies waited in vain for them in the drawing-room, here Colonel Berknowles had drunk a glass of mulled wine on that black morning over a hundred-and-thirty years ago when he went out with Councillor Kinsella and shot him through the lungs by the Round House on the Arranakilty Road. The diminutive Tom Moore had sung his songs here “put standing on the table” by the other guests, and the great Dan had held forth and the wind had dashed the ivy against the windows just as it did to-night with fist-fulls of rain from the Slieve Bloom Mountains. Byrne had put the big silver candlesticks on the table in honour of the guest, and he now appeared bearing in front of him a huge dish with a cover a size too small for it.

He placed 

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