“I can’t do that,” said Dr. O’Grady, “but I have a proposal to lay before the meeting which I think will get us out of our difficulty.”
CHAPTER XVI
“Let you speak out,” said Doyle, “and if so be that you’re not asking us to pay up——”
“I think we may take it for granted, gentlemen,” said Dr. O’Grady, “that if we produce a creditable statue for the Lord-Lieutenant to unveil and give him a really gratifying illuminated address——”
“The statue and the illuminated address would be all right,” said Doyle, “if there was any way of paying for them.”
“And a bouquet,” said Dr. O’Grady; “and a good luncheon. If we do all that and make ourselves generally agreeable by means of Mary Ellen and in other ways the Lord-Lieutenant couldn’t very well refuse to give us a grant of Government money to build a pier.”
“It’s likely he’d give it,” said Father McCormack, “it’s likely enough that he’d give it—if we——”
“He couldn’t well not,” said Doyle, “after us giving him a lunch and all.”
“If so be,” said Gallagher, “that he was to refuse at the latter end we’d have questions asked about him in Parliament; and believe you me that’s what he wouldn’t like. Them fellows is terrible afraid of the Irish Members. And they’ve a good right to be, for devil the finer set of men you’d see anywhere than what they are. There isn’t a thing goes wrong in the country but they’re ready to torment the life out of whoever might be responsible for the man that did it.”