Sergeant: The Department to blazes!
Mrs. Delane: What is it putting you out?
Sergeant: To go to the train to meet the lecturer, and there to get a message through the guard that he was unavoidably detained in the South, holding an inquest on the remains of a drake.
Mrs. Delane: The lecturer, is it?
Sergeant: To be sure. What else would I be talking of? The lecturer has failed me, and where am I to go looking for a person that I would think fitting to take his place?
Mrs. Delane: And that’s all? And you didn’t get any message but the one?
Sergeant: Is that all? I am surprised at you, Mrs. Delane. Isn’t it enough to upset a man, within three quarters of an hour of the time of the meeting? Where, I would ask you, am I to find a man that has education enough and wit enough and character enough to put up speaking on the platform on the minute?
Mr. Quirke: (Jumps up.) It is I myself will tell you that.
Sergeant: You!
Mr. Quirke: (Slapping Halvey on the back.) Look at here, Sergeant. There is not one word was said in all those papers about this young man before you but it is true. And there could be no good thing said of him that would be too good for him.