"The fact of the matter is," said I, when I had done with laughing, "that if they give you Home Rule you'll have nothing to complain about, and this'll be a dead country."
"I dunno will ut be a dead country," he replied. "Ye wouldn't have called ut a dead country if ye'd heard what Jim Reilly said to Tim Burke at the last council meetin'. An' it'll all be just about as alive as that."
"What did he say?"
"I should have to be very hot in anger to repeat ut," said he.
So as I drove again from Youghal to Ballysheen I received my second lesson in this glorious sad country. Dead or alive I was glad to be back in it. Even those few weeks the year before had been long enough to plant the call of it in my heart. For there is something in Ireland to those who know it well, which cries to you in the long nights and, in the summer days, holds out its arms mutely appealing to you to return. Indeed, I was glad to be back, and when at the gateway I was met by Dandy and Bellwattle I knew only of one other thing I could have wished more earnestly to see. Even that I forgot while Bellwattle was gripping my hand and Dandy was leaping wildly by my side.
"We're so glad to have you back," said she. "Look at him."
She pointed to Dandy, who stood upon his hind legs, rending the air with hilarious laughter.
"Hooray! hooray!" he yelled, and had he worn a thousand hats on his head he would have flung them all up in the air at once. A welcome like that is worth coming many miles for. Even Cruikshank in his quiet way was exuberant in spirits.
"Good man!" he kept saying. "Good man." As though I had accomplished some feat of virtue by my arrival.
But it was not till we sat down to lunch that I asked what had been the meaning of that important telegram.