‘I’m not going into that. I’m only asking what the people over us say is the best way to govern us. I’d like to know, once for all, what was wrong and what was right in Ireland.’
‘Has not the Premier just told you, sir,’ replied Nina, ‘that it is always the reverse of what obtains everywhere else?’
‘I have had enough of it, anyhow,’ cried Dick, who, though not intending it before, now was carried away by a momentary gust of passion to make the avowal.
‘Have you been in the Cabinet all this time, then, without our knowing it?’ asked Nina archly.
‘It is not of the Cabinet I was speaking, mademoiselle. It was of the country.’ And he answered haughtily.
‘And where would you go, Dick, and find better?’ said Kate.
‘Anywhere. I should find better in America, in Canada, in the Far West, in New Zealand—but I mean to try in Australia.’
‘And what will you do when you get there?’ asked Kilgobbin, with a grim humour in his look.
‘Do tell me, Cousin Dick, for who knows that it might not suit me also?’
Young Kearney filled his glass, and drained it without speaking. At last he said, ‘It will be for you, sir, to say if I make the trial. It is clear enough, I have no course open to me here. For a few hundred pounds, or, indeed, for anything you like to give me, you get rid of me for ever. It will be the one piece of economy my whole life comprises.’