Some weeks were to pass before I learned the Government’s real reason for wanting to detach Conroy from the Unionist cause; but luck favoured me in the matter of sounding Conroy himself. I had a letter from him in which he said that he was coming to our neighbourhood for a few days. I immediately asked him to stay with me.
Then I tried, very foolishly, to make my nephew Godfrey feel uncomfortable.
“Conroy,” I said, “is coming here to stay with me next Tuesday.”
“How splendid!” said Godfrey. “I say, Excellency, you will ask me up to dinner every night he’s here, won’t you?”
“I thought,” I said, “that you wouldn’t like to meet Conroy.”
“Of course I’d like to meet him. He might give me a job of some kind or get me one. A man like that with millions of money must have plenty of jobs to give away.”
When Godfrey speaks of a job he means a salary. Nearly everybody does.
“If I can only get the chance of making myself agreeable to him,” said Godfrey, “I’m sure I’ll be able to get something out of him.”
“I’m surprised,” I said, “at your wanting to meet him at all. After the post-card he wrote you—”