“The same.”
“Is this your usual way of receiving strangers, my friend, or is your present manner an especial politeness to ourselves?”
“Can you let us have a dinner, and make up a couple of rooms?” broke in Vyner, hastily. “We should like to stop here a few days.”
“You can see the rooms, whether they’ll do for you or not; such as they are, you can have them, but I can’t make them better.”
“And for eating, what can you give us?”
“Mutton always—fish and game when there’s the season for them—and poteen to wash them down.”
“That is the illicit spirit, isn’t it?” asked Grenfell.
“Just as illicit as anything else a man makes of his own produce for his own use; just as illicit as the bread that is made of his own corn.”
“You’re a politician, I see,” said Grenfell, with a sneering laugh. “I half suspected it when I saw your green flag there.”
“If I hadn’t been one, and an honest one too, I’d not be here today,” said he, with an energy greater than he had shown before. “Have you anything to say against that flag?”