“I don’t see why not. He might have hired some girl for half an hour.” “No decent girl would do it,” said Gallagher, “and anyway I wouldn’t have had the time, for he had me in the motor again before I knew where he was and ‘Show me the way to the house,’ says he. ‘You can’t see her at the present time,’ says I, ‘though you may later,’ ‘And why not?’ says he. ‘The reason why you can’t,’ says I, ‘is a delicate matter,’ ‘Oh!’ says he. ‘That’s the way of it, is it? I’m glad to hear of it. The more of the stock of the old General there are in the world the better.’ Well, when I seen him so pleased as all that, I thought it would be no harm to please him more. ‘It’s twins,’ I said, ‘and what’s more the both of them is boys,’ ‘Take me to see the father,’ says he. ‘I’ll be able to see him anyway. I’d like to shake him by the hand.’” “Has he seen young Kerrigan?” said Dr. O’Grady. “He has not; but he won’t rest easy till he does. I wanted to run round and tell young Kerrigan the way things are, so as he’d be ready when the gentleman came. But Doyle said it would be better for me to tell you what had happened before worse came of it.” “Doyle was perfectly right Kerrigan would stand over your story all right as long as he could, but in the end he’d have had to produce the twins. That’s the awkward part. If you hadn’t said twins we might have managed. But there isn’t a pair in the town.” “Couldn’t you telegraph to Dublin?” said the Major. “For a man of your resource, O’Grady, mere twins ought not to prove a hopeless obstacle. I should think that one of the hospitals where they go in for that kind of thing would be quite glad to let you have a brace of babies in or about the same age.” O’Grady knew that this suggestion was not meant to be helpful. The Major had an objectionable habit of indulging in heavy sarcasm. He turned on him sharply. “You’d better go home, Major. When you try to be facetious you altogether cease to be useful. You know perfectly well that there’s no use talking about importing babies. What would we do with them afterwards? You couldn’t expect young Kerrigan to keep them.” “I offered to go home some time ago,” said the Major, “and you wouldn’t let me. Now that I’ve heard about young Kerrigan’s twins I mean to stop where I am and see what happens.” “Very well, Major. Just as you like. As long as you don’t upset Billing by rolling up any of those heavy jokes of yours against him I don’t mind. Here we are. I expect Doyle has Billing in the bar trying to pacify him with whisky. You’d better stay outside, Thady.” “I’d be glad of a drop then,” said Gallagher wistfully. “After all the talking I did this afternoon——”