“I think we needn’t search this house, sergeant,” he said. “I know it.”
“If you’d like to come back in an hour or two, Master Harry,” said Mrs. O’Halloran, “I’ll have a bit of dinner ready for you, and I wouldn’t say but there might be something for the sergeant and his men. It’s what her ladyship is always saying that we ought to do the best we can for the lads that’s fighting for us against the Germans—so long as they behave themselves. But mind this now, sergeant, if you do look in in the course of the evening there must be no carrying on with the girls. The Lord knows they’re giddy enough without you upsetting them worse.”
That night, after dark, three young Sinn Feiners climbed the wall at the end of Lady Devereux’ back yard and dropped into a narrow lane beyond it. A fortnight later Mrs. O’Halloran received a large parcel containing three suits of clothes, the property of Second Lieutenant Devereux, left by him in his aunt’s house when he first put on his uniform. They were carefully brushed and folded, in no way the worse for having been worn by strangers for one night.
In the bottom of Mrs. O’Halloran’s trunk there are three rebel uniforms. And on the top of the cupboard in her room are three rifles, made in Germany.
XIV ~~ CIVILIZED WAR
“This,” said Captain Power, “is an utterly rotten war.”
The rain was dripping through the roof of the shed which had been allotted to Power as a billet. The mud outside was more than ankle deep. The damp inside was chilly and penetrating. Ned Waterhouse, a Second Lieutenant, the only other occupant of the shed, looked up from an old newspaper which he was trying to read.
“All wars are rotten,” he said.
“Not at all,” said Power; “a properly conducted war, run in a decent way by civilized men is quite agreeable, rather fun, in fact. Now the last in which I was mixed up was rather fun.”