“No, I don’t trust the mistress that far,” she declared, waving her arm. “But it’s meself that I keep me thoughts to. She’s up to something, and if you’d seen what I’ve seen in this very house, you’d know it too. And it’s Polly Pluck who knows it. She’s a smart little girl, is Polly; but I don’t trust her. Blowing hot first and then cold, and first this way and then that, walking out one week with a Black-and-Tan and the next with a Shinner. If you can’t be for one side, I sez, for land’s sake be for the other, and don’t go chopping and changing like a cock with no head. But do you think she’ll listen. Not she.” “Why do you stay here, Mrs. O’Grady, if it’s so dangerous?” “It suits me,” she declared. “I could leave to-morrow and get a place where you’d be proud to eat your dinner off the floors, and a kitchen, mind you, that I wouldn’t mind living me life in; but this suits me.” “I think you are very stupid to stay.” “I do be, mum, I do be. But it suits me. I’ve had me fortunes too.” “Really?” “Yes, mum. Real fortunes. The first I spent going to Killarney. I stayed at the best hotel. Och, and a grand evening dress and all to me back. I had peaches, not sixpenny peaches, but peaches worth four or five shillings, and my sister, who hasn’t spent a penny of hers yet, called me a fool. I may be a fool, and she may feel a lady with her money in the bank; but she’ll never feel as I did in that evening dress.” “What happened to the other fortune?” “I bought a burying ground with it. My father had a burying ground, but there was only room for one more in it, so me brother having the name, we thought he should have it. I was afraid O’Grady would put me anywhere, and I wouldn’t like that. I’m come from Brian Boru, though you wouldn’t think it to look at me now, but there was a time when I was as particular as yourself about me boots and gloves.” She sighed. “Well, I can rest easy, and I have my grave, and room in it for O’Grady, too, though I’ve seen as much of him as I want in life, and that’s the truth.” Himself came into the room brisk for a walk. “Well, Mrs. O’Grady,” he said cheerfully, “so O’Grady was ambushed last night?” “Indeed, and he was, sir.” Mrs. O’Grady stopped as she spoke, and tweeked a chair cover straight. “It shook him.” “Terrible times, Mrs. O’Grady.” “They do be terrible times. Sure, but we’re used to terrible times in Ireland. It was the same when I was a girl, and before I was a girl. Why, my grandfather was murdered out there on the Wicklow Hills. There was terrible times then. It’s me mother I’ve heard tell of them over and over again. Never trust the English, she said, and I never have, no, not the length of me arm, nor my children either. Ah, well you don’t have to go streeling the streets for news in Ireland.” There was a tap at the door, which made us all jump, and the next minute Mrs. Slaney bustled into the room. “Mrs. O’Grady, I’ve called you three times, what are you doing?”