Gheena's flush faded slowly. Mrs. Keane was just asking Darby if he did not think of doing something out there. Drive a car even, he could do that.
"I should be more in the way than a help," said Darby after a pause. He seemed to find it hard to answer. "There will be enough cripples going home without a ready-made one going out," he added with a twisted smile.
"What do you think Evangeline De Burgho Keane was born into the world for?" Gheena asked fiercely, watching the lady go towards the garden, from which she would return followed by a youth bearing a bundle of cuttings and plants, and possibly fruit.
"To make us see how nice other people are," said Darby equally. "Keefe, she's calling you now, she's turned back."
Mr. Keefe emerged from behind a newly-lighted pipe to answer humbly.
"I do trust you are looking after your part of it, Mr. Keefe, and not allowing the police to do nothing on bicycles all over the country when there's a war in Europe. Their place should be on the cliffs watching for spies and submarines."
"I've applied for a commission," said Keefe briefly and irrelevantly, "and the coastguards are trebled. These are on the look-out for men on Leeshane and Innisfail, and there is the patrol boat. My part's inland, Mrs. De Burgho Keane, until I get out to fight."
Mrs. Keane—his tone offended her—said that she feared Mrs. Weston would miss him; but no doubt when they took him off to learn drill they would send some old and experienced man to a place of importance.
"It's like slipping down a cliff covered with furze bushes," said Darby, "everything raking you the wrong way, painfully. Gheena, come and see the horses. Cheer up, Keefe."
He began to move so easily that he looked at his twisted limb, and a thrill of hope moved him. Would it ever regain some strength—allow him even to walk without the crutch he detested? He let it—the leg—drag and saw its inert helplessness, and still thought it did not drag so much or fall so uselessly.