“Why do you stay here, Mrs. O’Grady, if it’s so dangerous?”
“It suits me,” she declared. “I could leave to-morrow and get a place where you’d be proud to eat your dinner off the floors, and a kitchen, mind you, that I wouldn’t mind living me life in; but this suits me.”
“I think you are very stupid to stay.”
“I do be, mum, I do be. But it suits me. I’ve had me fortunes too.”
“Really?”
“Yes, mum. Real fortunes. The first I spent going to Killarney. I stayed at the best hotel. Och, and a grand evening dress and all to me back. I had peaches, not sixpenny peaches, but peaches worth four or five shillings, and my sister, who hasn’t spent a penny of hers yet, called me a fool. I may be a fool, and she may feel a lady with her money in the bank; but she’ll never feel as I did in that evening dress.”
“What happened to the other fortune?”
“I bought a burying ground with it. My father had a burying ground, but there was only room for one more in it, so me brother having the name, we thought he should have it. I was afraid O’Grady would put me anywhere, and I wouldn’t like that. I’m come from Brian Boru, though you wouldn’t think it to look at me now, but there was a time when I was as particular as yourself about me boots and gloves.” She sighed. “Well, I can rest easy, and I have my grave, and room in it for O’Grady, too, though I’ve seen as much of him as I want in life, and that’s the truth.”
Himself came into the room brisk for a walk.
“Well, Mrs. O’Grady,” he said cheerfully, “so O’Grady was ambushed last night?”