“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
The clutches grated as the lorries turned. The armoured car rolled after them. In a minute it was all dark again outside.
I went to the basement to find what Mrs. O’Grady was doing. She was in tears on a chair near the fire.
“I’ll never get over this night, at all, at all. And him with his lovely hair and his beautiful smile; him that will be dead before morning. It’s lucky you are. It’s you have your scarf round the neck of a fine young Irishman, and O’Grady’s is there, too, for I gave it to him last thing. Sure, but I do be glad he’s finished his dinner, it’s the last dinner he’ll take maybe. And there’s his tea, not half drunk in his cup, just as he left it. I hadn’t it in me heart to throw it away. It’s black trouble has been brought on us all, and it’s blacker will come.”
She rose from her chair and produced a box of matches from some mysterious pocket, and lighted the gas stove for me.
“God help him!” she exclaimed. “There’s his tea.”
CHAPTER XVIII
WINTER WEARS OUT
Our road came in for a spell of peace after the departure of the Minister of Propaganda. From time to time other houses up and down the way had been looked up by the Crown Forces; but for a while the neighbourhood seemed to pass out of the public eye, and the lorries rolled down other streets.