Augusta Goold herself was more tolerant and more philosophic than her friends. She looked at the yeomen with a certain admiration. Their exuberant youthfulness, their strutting, and their obvious belief in themselves, made a strong appeal to her imagination. ‘Look at that young man,’ she said to Hyacinth, pointing out a volunteer who passed them in the street. ‘I happen to know who he is. In fact, I knew his people very well indeed at one time, and spent a fortnight with them once when that young man was a toddler, and sometimes sat on my knee--at least, he may have sat on my knee. There were a good many children, and at this distance of time I can’t be certain which of them it was that used to worry me most during the hour before dinner. The father is a landlord in the North, and comes of a fine old family. He’s a strong Protestant, and English, of course, in all his sympathies. Well, a hundred years or so ago that boy’s great-grandfather was swaggering about these same streets in a uniform, just as his descendant is doing now. He helped to drag a cannon into the Phoenix Park one day with a large placard tied over its muzzle--“Our rights or----” Who do you think he was threatening? Just the same England that this boy is so keen to fight for to-day!’ ‘Ah,’ said Hyacinth, ‘you are thinking of the volunteer movement of 1780.’ ‘Afterwards,’ she went on, ‘he was one of the incorruptibles. You’ll see his name on Jonah Barrington’s red list. He stood out to the last against the Union, wouldn’t be bribed, and fought two duels with Castlereagh’s bravoes. The curious thing is that the present man is quite proud of that ancestor in a queer, inconsistent sort of way. Says the only mark of distinction his family can boast of is that they didn’t get a Union peerage. Strange, isn’t it?’ ‘It is strange,’ said Hyacinth. ‘The Irish gentry of 1782 were men to be proud of; yet look at their descendants to-day.’ ‘It is very sad. Do you know, I sometimes think that Ireland will never get her freedom till those men take it for her. Almost every struggle that Ireland ever made was captained by her aristocracy. Think of the Geraldines and the O’Neills. Think of Sarsfield and the Wild Geese. Think of the men who wrenched a measure of independence from England in 1782. Think of Lord Edward and Smith O’Brien. No, we may talk and write and agitate, but we’ll _do_ nothing till we get the old families with us.’ Hyacinth laughed. It seemed to him that Miss Goold was deliberately talking nonsense, rejoicing in a paradox. ‘We are likely to wait, if we wait for them. Look at those.’ He waved his hand towards a group of yeomen who were chatting at the street corner. ‘They are going to stamp out a nation in South Africa. Is it likely that they will create one here?’