“Mr. Figgis has a wonderful brain. I think he’s the brains of the movement myself. Besides, I’m not afraid of the Black-and-Tans. I’m an Irishwoman. Look at the sacrifices Irishwomen have made. Mr. Fitzgerald isn’t going to live here. He’s coming sometimes after dark for meals. Mrs. Fitzgerald and the baby will be here. I don’t want the people upstairs to know who she is. After all, Fitzgerald is a common enough name. They can think she’s a widow.”
“There’s a baby. I thought you wouldn’t have a baby?”
“But this baby is a grown baby. It’s eleven months old, and its mother says it’s a very good baby, it makes no noise at all.”
“Of course, one can only prove that.”
“There’s one other thing.” Mrs. Slaney moved uneasily. “It’s about the baths. You and your husband have always had as many baths as you wanted. We must make a little difference in that rule now, and treat you like the others. This weather you can’t want more than two baths a week. Perhaps in summer we can make some other arrangement.” She went on to the Minister of Propaganda. “Poor man, he will be delighted to get a flat where he can have his meals in comfort. He’s been on the run for a long time now. It’s shameful an Irishman should have to live like that. I shall soon get to know Mrs. Fitzgerald, the baby will be the link; and I shall hear everything that is going on. I must go and write my letter.”
When I spoke to Himself about it afterwards, he said, “I suppose those people will be all right here. I wouldn’t like to go bail. Since the last raid men always seem hanging about. I suppose they give the house a look up now and then. The less we know about things the better.”
But we were not the only people in the house with forebodings.
A week later, when Mrs. Fitzgerald had already been settled in a day or two, the door opened cautiously and Mrs. O’Grady, dustpan in hand, came in with the air of a conspirator.
“The mistress is after setting the hall flat,” she said mysteriously.
“I know. I thought they had been in a day or two.”