‘I see here,’ cried he, ‘his Excellency is good enough to say that some mark of royal favour might be advantageously extended to those Kilgobbin people, in recognition of their heroic defence. What should it be, is the question.’
‘Confer on him the peerage, perhaps.’
‘That is totally out of the question.’
‘It was Kate Kearney made the defence; why not give her a commission in the army?—make it another “woman’s right.”’
‘You are absurd, Mr. Atlee.’
‘Suppose you endowed her out of the Consolidated Fund? Give her twenty thousand pounds, and I can almost assure you that a very clever fellow I know will marry her.’
‘A strange reward for good conduct.’
‘A prize of virtue. They have that sort of thing in France, and they say it gives a great support to purity of morals.’
‘Young Kearney might accept something, if we knew what to offer him.’
‘I’d say a pair of black trousers; for I think I’m now wearing his last in that line.’