“Guess,” he said, “since I travelled in this slumbrous old country of yours I’ve seen considerable stagnation, but this licks the worst I’ve struck yet. Your town pretty well fathoms the depths. Are the folks here alive at all?”
“They are, of course.”
Doyle looked round him as he spoke. He saw a good deal that the stranger missed. Sergeant Colgan and Constable Moriarty standing well back inside the barrack door, were visible, dim figures in the shadow, keenly alert, surveying the stranger. Young Kerrigan, the butcher’s son, crouched, half concealed, behind the body of a dead sheep which hung from a hook outside the door of his father’s shop. He too was watching. One side of the window blind of the Connacht Eagle office was pulled aside. Thaddeus Gallagher was without doubt peering at the motor-car through a corner of the window. Three small boys were lurking among the packing cases which stood outside a shop further down the street. Doyle felt justified in repeating his statement that many of the inhabitants of Ballymoy were alive.
“There is,” he said, “many a one that’s alive enough, though I don’t say but that business might be brighter. Mary Ellen, I say, come here.”
Mary Ellen appeared at the door of the hotel. She had improved her appearance slightly by putting on an apron. But she had not found time to wash her face. This was not her fault. Washing is a serious business. In Mary Ellen’s case it would have taken a long time if it were to be in the least effective. Doyle’s call was urgent.
“Why didn’t you come when you heard me calling you?” he said.
Mary Ellen looked at him with a gentle tolerant smile. She belonged to a race which had discovered the folly of being in a hurry about anything. She knew that Doyle was not really in a hurry, though he pretended to be.
“Amn’t I coming?” she said.
Then she looked at the stranger. He, being a stranger and apparently a man of some other nation, might perhaps really be in a hurry. Such people sometimes are. But his eccentricities in no way mattered to Mary Ellen. The wisdom of the ages was hers. The Irish have it. So have eastern peoples. They will survive when the fussy races have worn themselves out. She gave the stranger one glance of half contemptuous pity and then looked at the motorcar.
“Now that you are here,” said Doyle severely, “will you make yourself useful?”