"I see Patsy's been lending you his treasures," she said.
"Yes, indeed, m'lady. I asked him not to, but he wouldn't take any notice of me. He said he'd no use for the things. He's stripped himself bare, m'lady. I didn't know men were like that. Small wonder the dumb beasts love him. I wonder he has anything left to give."
She spoke with such fervour that Lady O'Gara was touched.
"You've had a sad experience of men, my poor Susan," she said. "But you are quite right about Patsy. There are few men as gentle as he is. We all look on Patsy as a dear and valued friend. I must find him some other things to keep him from missing these. Not books—I know his house is piled with books. He won't miss those, though he has given you the ones he like best. I wonder whether I could find pictures like those. I think I have seen that Robert Emmet, or something like it, in a shop-window in Galway."
"I don't know who the gentlemen are," Susan said, looking from one patriot to another, "and I didn't want to have them taken from his walls. I expect they've left a mark on the wall-paper where they were taken down, for he said he'd got to do some papering for himself."
It was on Lady O'Gara's tongue to utter a gentle warning that Patsy must not be too much about the South lodge, but the warning remained unspoken.
"He's the best man I ever knew," said Susan, "I didn't know there was his like in the world. It's a strange thing, m'lady, that men can be so different. Listen, m'lady,—if Baker was to come back—you wouldn't let him claim me? The Master wouldn't let him claim me? I'd drown myself and the child before we'd go back to him. He did knock us about something cruel. And my Georgie, so gentle that he'd move a heart of stone. I frightened Baker from laying a hand on Georgie; I told him I'd kill him if I was to be hanged for it."
The woman's eyes, no longer gentle, blazed at Lady O'Gara.
"Hush! Hush!" she said. "He shall not trouble you. If he should come back…"
"He's found us out no matter where we've been. Even good Christians got tired at last of Baker comin' and askin' for his wife and son and makin' a row and the police fetched, and it gettin' in the papers. They give us up. Oh, Lord, if they knew what they was givin' us up to! They'd better have shot us."