“If them fellows over in England,” he said, “weren’t terrible frightened of the Sinn Feiners, would they be offering us the likes of that to keep us quiet? Bedamn, but they would not. Nobody ever got a penny out of an Englishman yet, without he’d frightened him first. And it’s the Sinn Feiners done that. There’s the why and the wherefore of it to you. Twenty-five shillings a week! It ought to be thirty shillings, so it ought. But sure, twenty-five shillings is something, and I’d be in favour of taking it, so I would. Let the people of Ireland take it, I say, as an instalment of what’s due to them, and what they’ll get in the latter end, please God!”
“Can you make out how a man’s to get it?” said Lady Corless.
“Man!” said old Malone. “Man! No, but man and woman. There isn’t a girl in the country, let alone a boy, but what’s entitled to it, and I’d like to see the police or anyone else interfering with them getting it.”
“Will it be paid out of the post office like the Old Age Pensions?” said Lady Corless.
“I don’t know will it,” said her father, “but that way or some other way it’s bound to be paid, and all anyone has to do is to go over to what they call the Labour Exchange, at Dunbeg, and say there’s no work for him where he lives. Then he’ll get the money. It’s what the young fellow in that office is there for, is to give the money, and by damn if he doesn’t do it there’ll be more heard about the matter!”
Old Malone, anxious to spread the good news, left the room and walked down to the public house at the corner of the village street. Lady Corless went into the kitchen and found her three youngest sisters drinking tea. They sat on low stools before the fire and had a black teapot with a broken spout standing on the hearth at their feet. The tea in the pot was very black and strong. Lady Corless addressed them solemnly.
“Katey-Ann,” she said, “listen to me now, and let you be listening too, Onnie, and let Honoria stop scratching her head and attend to what I’m saying to the whole of you. I’m taking you on up at the big house as upper house-maid, Katey-Ann.”
“And what’s come over Sarah,” said Katey-Ann. “Is she going to be married?”
“Never mind you about Sarah,” said Lady Corless, “but attend to me. You’re the under-housemaid, Onnie, so you are, in place of your sister Susy, and Honoria here is kitchen-maid. If anyone comes asking you questions that’s what you are and that’s what you’re to say. Do you understand me now? But mind this. I don’t want you up at the house, ne’er a one of you. You’ll stay where you are and you’ll do what you’re doing, looking after your father and drinking tea, the same as before, only your wages will be paid regular to you. Where’s Thady?”
Thady Malone was the youngest of the family.