“So it’s fighting you’re for now, Master Harry,” she said. “Well, it’s what’ll suit you. It’s my opinion that you’re never out of mischief only when you’re in something worse. It is that way with you as long as I know you and that’s since you were born or pretty near. It’s the Germans, is it? Well, I’m sorry for them Germans if there’s many like you going to be soldiers.”
Harry took this as a compliment. It was his hope that the Germans would be sorry for themselves when he got out to France with his platoon of Wessex men.
After dinner, Molly, the parlourmaid, her day’s work ended, became sentimental. She said it was a terrible thing to think of all the fine men that would be killed, and maybe young Mr. Devereux among them. Mrs. O’Halloran checked her flow of feeling.
“Is it Master Harry be killed? Talk sense, can’t you? Sure you couldn’t kill the like of that one. Haven’t I seen him, not once but a dozen times, climbing out on the roof of the house and playing himself to and fro among the chimneys. If that wasn’t the death of him, and him not more than twelve years old at the time, is it likely the Germans would be able to kill him? The like of him is the same as fleas that you’d be squeezing with your finger and thumb or maybe drowning in a basin of water. You know well they’d be hopping over you after the same as before.”
Molly sniffed. It was not wise to argue with “Ould Biddy,” who had a talent for forcible speech.
Mrs. O’Halloran had the best right in the world to the free use of her tongue. She was a really good cook. She had satisfied Sir Joseph Devereux while he lived. She satisfied Lady Devereux afterwards. And Lady Devereux appreciated good cooking. Her husband dead, her three daughters safely married, she had leisure to enjoy eating and had money enough to pay for the best which the Dublin markets provided. Next to good food Lady Devereux valued peace and the absence of worry. Mrs. O’Halloran enjoyed strife and liked a strenuous life. She took all the annoyances of the household on herself, and when they proved too few for her, created unnecessary worry for herself by harassing the maids. Lady Devereux slept untroubled at night, rose late in the morning, found all things very much to her liking, and grew comfortably fat.
For eight months of the year, from October till the end of May, Lady Devereux lived in one of the fine Georgian houses which are the glory of the residential squares of Dublin. It was a corner house, rather larger than the others in the square, with more light and more air, because its position gave it a view up and down two streets as well as across the lawn which formed the centre of the square.
Before the war Harry Devereux used to say that his aunt’s house was the best in Dublin for a dance. It pained him to see its possibilities wasted. After receiving his commission he looked at the world with the eye of a soldier and gave it as his opinion that the house occupied the finest strategic position in Dublin. There was not much chance of persuading plump old Lady Devereux to give a ball. There seemed even less chance of her home ever being used as a fortress. But fate plays strange tricks with us and our property, especially in Ireland. It happened that Lady Devereux’ house was occupied more or less by the soldiers of one army, and shot at with some vigour by the soldiers of another on Easter Monday, 1916. Oddly enough it was neither the rebels nor the soldiers who earned credit by their military operations, but old Biddy O’Halloran.
Mrs. O’Halloran always enjoyed Bank holidays greatly. She did not go out, visit picture houses or parade the streets in her best clothes. She found a deeper and more satisfying pleasure in telling the younger maids what she thought of them when they asked and obtained leave to go out for the afternoon, and in making scathing remarks about their frocks and hats as they passed through the kitchen to reach the area door. On that particular Easter Monday she was enjoying herself thoroughly. A kitchenmaid—she was new to the household or she would not have done it—had asked Lady Devereux’ permission to go out for the afternoon and evening. She got what she asked for. Everybody who asked Lady Devereux for anything got it as a matter of course. The kitchenmaid ought to have made her application through Mrs. O’Halloran. It is the rule in all services that remote authorities must be approached only through the applicant’s immediate superiors. Mrs. O’Halloran took her own way of impressing this on the kitchenmaid.
“I suppose now,” she said, “that you’ll be trapsing the streets of Dublin in the new pink blouse that you spent your last month’s wages on?”