MRS O'FLAHERTY [much dashed]. Oh murder! They must be a mean lot, Dinny. O'FLAHERTY [sarcastic]. Maybe you'd have me in the Turkish army, and worship the heathen Mahomet that put a corn in his ear and pretended it was a message from the heavens when the pigeon come to pick it out and eat it. I went where I could get the biggest allowance for you; and little thanks I get for it! MRS O'FLAHERTY. Allowance, is it! Do you know what the thieving blackguards did on me? They came to me and they says, "Was your son a big eater?" they says. "Oh, he was that," says I: "ten shillings a week wouldn't keep him." Sure I thought the more I said the more they'd give me. "Then," says they, "that's ten shillings a week off your allowance," they says, "because you save that by the king feeding him." "Indeed!" says I: "I suppose if I'd six sons, you'd stop three pound a week from me, and make out that I ought to pay you money instead of you paying me." "There's a fallacy in your argument," they says. O'FLAHERTY. A what? MRS O'FLAHERTY. A fallacy: that's the word he said. I says to him, "It's a Pharisee I'm thinking you mean, sir; but you can keep your dirty money that your king grudges a poor old widow; and please God the English will be got yet for the deadly sin of oppressing the poor;" and with that I shut the door in his face. O'FLAHERTY [furious]. Do you tell me they knocked ten shillings off you for my keep? MRS O'FLAHERTY [soothing him]. No, darlint: they only knocked off half a crown. I put up with it because I've got the old age pension; and they know very well I'm only sixty-two; so I've the better of them by half a crown a week anyhow. O'FLAHERTY. It's a queer way of doing business. If they'd tell you straight out what they was going to give you, you wouldn't mind; but if there was twenty ways of telling the truth and only one way of telling a lie, the Government would find it out. It's in the nature of governments to tell lies. Teresa Driscoll, a parlor maid, comes from the house, TERESA. You're to come up to the drawing-room to have your tea, Mrs. O'Flaherty. MRS O'FLAHERTY. Mind you have a sup of good black tea for me in the kitchen afterwards, acushla. That washy drawing-room tea will give me the wind if I leave it on my stomach. [She goes into the house, leaving the two young people alone together.] O'FLAHERTY. Is that yourself, Tessie? And how are you? TERESA. Nicely, thank you. And how's yourself? O'FLAHERTY. Finely, thank God. [He produces a gold chain.] Look what I've brought you, Tessie. TERESA [shrinking]. Sure I don't like to touch it, Denny. Did you take it off a dead man? O'FLAHERTY. No: I took it off a live one; and thankful he was to me to be alive and kept a prisoner in ease and comfort, and me left fighting in peril of my life. TERESA [taking it]. Do you think it's real gold, Denny? O'FLAHERTY. It's real German gold, anyhow. TERESA. But German silver isn't real, Denny.