“It’d be a charity,” declared Mrs. O’Grady, earnestly, but with no sincerity. “But these stairs do be terrible on my legs.” She threw up her hands and withdrew. Himself was gazing into the soup like Mélisande. I, being a philosopher, started on mine at once. CHAPTER VI WE MAKE ACQUAINTANCES Himself and I had got a grip of Dublin at the end of a week by using a map and doing a lot of walking. All this time Mrs. Slaney was becoming more friendly. She swallowed rebuffs as an ostrich swallows stones. We began to know by sight the people in the neighbourhood. A number of officers lived in one of the houses. Sometimes they were in uniform, and sometimes in mufti. They went out at night very late, returning during or after curfew as they felt inclined. Usually a car called for them, driven by a soldier, and it brought them back again with a great clatter, when the street was doing its best to sleep. These men carried guns in their pockets. “Those men are spies,” Mrs. Slaney said, coming in to borrow a little butter. “Look at them going out in mufti. Do they think our people are fools? Absurd! The Government lets them go about like that, and expects them to get information.” “They must get information, I suppose,” I said. “After all, if they were no good they wouldn’t be kept on.” She threw up her hands. “The Government pours out money like water!” The men in this particular house fascinated me. They came and went so often it seemed as if they never slept. There was one individual I found more absorbing than the others. He was about forty, tall and immaculate. His ties and socks were wonderful, his shoes the most beautiful suède, his collar fitted as no other collar I have seen fitted a man, and I am sure he wore stays. On his head was a bowler at an extreme angle. He looked a “wrong un,” the sort of person you would not introduce to your daughter. He usually made a first sortie about eleven, and tottered towards the Shelbourne for a cocktail. Dublin intrigued me. The people are grubby and intellectual, and crafty and philosophic, and sublime and material all at the same time. The fat beggars whine their piteous stories at every corner, and the children tell the tale as glibly as the mothers. Each person is more droll than the next, and nobody really believes anybody else. Every day provided a new excitement. I have forgotten half of them now; but one I remember clearly. It happened during one of my first walks. I was coming home across one of the bridges over the canal on the south side of the city. Men, women, and children were peering over into the water, and I peered too. All I saw were four big, important policemen, who seemed to be guarding the canal. Then, in the middle of the canal, I discovered a large oil drum floating with the Sinn Fein flag on top. Below the flag was a placard--“Spies and Informers, beware.” While I was still gaping, as was everybody else, a lorry load of troops, with tin hats and rifles, rattled up.