"It's the lot of every Irishman to-day who says what he thinks."
"It mustn't be yours! It mustn't!" Angela's voice rose in her distress. She repeated: "It mustn't! I'll appeal to my brother to stop it."
"If he's anything like his father it's small heed he'll pay to your pleading. The poor wretches here appealed to old Kingsnorth in famine and sickness—not for HELP, mind ye, just for a little time to pay their rents—and the only answer they ever got from him was 'Pay or go'!"
"I know! I know!" Angela replied. "And many a time when I was a child my mother and I cried over it."
He looked at her curiously. "You and yer mother cried over US?"
"We did. Indeed we did."
"They say the heart of England is in its womenkind. But they have nothing to do with her laws."
"They will have some day."
"It'll be a long time comin', I'm thinkin'. If they take so long to free a whole country how long do ye suppose it'll take them to free a whole sex—and the female one at that?"
"It will come!" she said resolutely.