“She’s no such thing,” said Doyle, “and well you know it.”
“The doctor has it put out about her that she is,” said Moriarty, “and Mary Ellen’s well enough content. Aren’t you, Mary Ellen?”
“I am surely,” said Mary Ellen. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Look here, Moriarty,” said Dr. O’Grady, “if you’ve got any idea into your head that there’s a fortune either large or small coming to Mary Ellen out of this business you’re making a big mistake.”
“I wasn’t thinking any such thing,” said Moriarty. “Don’t I know well enough it’s only talk?”
“It will be as much as we can possibly do,” said Dr. O’Grady, “to pay for the statue and the incidental expenses. Pensioning off Mary Ellen afterwards is simply out of the question.”
“Let alone that she doesn’t deserve a pension,” said Doyle, “and wouldn’t get one if we were wading up to our knees in sovereigns.”
“So you may put it out of your head that Mary Ellen will make a penny by it,” said Dr. O’Grady.
“It wasn’t that I was thinking of at all,” said Moriarty, “for I know you couldn’t do it. My notion—what I was saying to Mary Ellen a minute ago—is that if the Lord-Lieutenant was to be told—at the time that he’d be looking at the statue—whenever that might be—that Mary Ellen was the niece of the General——”
“If you’re planning out a regular court presentation for Mary Ellen,” said Dr. O’Grady, “the thing can’t be done. No one here is in a position to present anyone else because we have none of us been presented ourselves. Besides, it wouldn’t be the least use to her if she was presented. The Lord-Lieutenant wouldn’t take her on as an upper housemaid or anything of that sort merely because she’d been presented to him as General John Regan’s niece.”