“It does represent him. There’s no purporting about the matter. The General’s name is on the pedestal. You’ll see it yourself as soon as you unveil it.”
“It now appears,” said Lord Alfred coldly, “that there never was such a person as General John Regan.”
“Well? Try and get along a little quicker. I don’t see yet where the insult to the Lord-Lieutenant is supposed to come in.”
“You asked the Lord-Lieutenant to unveil a faked-up statue, and you have the amazing assurance to say now that you don’t see that you’ve done anything wrong.”
“I don’t.”
“But there never was a General——”
“Do you mean to say,” said Dr. O’Grady, “that the Lord-Lieutenant supposed that the General really existed?”
“Of course he supposed it. How could there be a statue to him if he didn’t? We all supposed it. It wasn’t until His Excellency began to prepare the speech he was to make that we found out the truth. He wrote to the British Museum and to the Librarian at the Bodleian——”
“I’m sorry he took all that trouble. We didn’t expect anything of the sort.”
“What did you expect?”