"Phwat gintry?" says I.
"Sir Patrick Freebody, o' Michaelstown," says she, an' at that me blood run cowld.
Sir Patrick Freebody had the grandest garden over at Michaelstown that ivver you'd see in the nation of Ireland, an' a cousin to me, John O'Callaghan, was gardener to him. There was no love betwane us either, by the same token. I would as soon wake John O'Callaghan as I would the Divil, an' that's the morthal truth, for all that he was a cousin to me.
I knew how 'twould be as sure as I was alive in this worrld. Owld Sir Pat would be into lunch before a bare board, an' whin he wint home to Michaelstown he would be tellin' John O'Callaghan, an' I would be skinned raw wid the jeerin' an' blaggardin' the same John O'Callaghan would have wid me.
"Whisper, whin will they be atein'?" says I to Anne Toher.
"In ten minutes, please God, an' the spuds are soft," says she.
"Begob," says I to meself, "I'll set flowers on that table or cut my throat across," an' I ran away, not knowin' where I'd be findin' thim, not within five miles. But I was not half-way round the laurel bushes whin the Blessed Saints sent me light.
In sivin minuites I had flowers in the middle bowl, an' backed away behindt the hat-racks as Herself an' owld Sir Pat comes out of the drawin'-room an' goes in to lunch. I set me eye to the kayhole and watched, me heart like water betwane me teeth.
Owld Sir Pat, he mumbles an' coughs an' talks about the weather, an' the war, an' the recruitin'.
Herself she talks about the soldiers' shest-protectors an' her war work, an' how she was scared the Colonel was sittin' about at the Front wid wet fate.