“I always feel so uneasy when he’s in the house. Poor hunted man! You’ve not seen him, I suppose?”
I shook my head. “Never.”
“Awful for Mrs. Fitzgerald! Those brutes might shoot him at any moment. But I suppose she’s used to it.”
“Perhaps he gets a certain amount of fun out of the life. No man can call it dull eluding the Black-and-Tans.”
“Fun! Being hunted to death like the vermin of the fields. Fun! Battered from pillar to post. The military are getting more and more audacious. I often wonder where they will stop. Women are frightened to have a bath now in case they come in, and they raided a convent the other day. Thank goodness, there was an outcry at that! A convent which had never admitted a man inside it. And at night. I heard the Mother Superior said the nuns behaved magnificently, there was no outcry from them, and when it was all over they went to the Chapel and tendered thanks to the Blessed Virgin that they had come to no harm.”
“I heard it said that the raid was conducted with great civility.”
“Yes. I believe those special raiders were not a bad lot of men. But the indignity of it! Would nuns intrigue and be interested in politics?”
“I really couldn’t say. You know best, of course. But there must have been some reason for the raid.”
“None whatever. It was simply to show their power. The love of terrifying people. But they didn’t terrify the nuns.”
“A Unionist told me the other day that the Irish question would be settled only when education was taken completely out of the Church’s hands and no religion was taught in the schools. I believe he’s right.”