Many times Sir John begged them to transfer themselves altogether to Rathcullen. But something of Australian independence held them back; they preferred to retain their rooms at the Lough Aniller house, though it saw less and less of them in the daytime, and Timsy openly bewailed their constant absence—until the sergeant came home on furlough, when Timsy promptly forgot every one else in the world, and walked with his head in clouds of glory.
“Indeed,” Mr. Linton said, one day, in answer to a renewed invitation—“I am frequently ashamed to think how completely we seem to have quartered ourselves on you, O’Neill. It’s hardly fair to inflict you still further.”
“If you could but guess what you have done for me, you might be surprised,” Sir John answered.
They were in the motor, running along a smooth high road near the little narrow-gauge railway line. Ahead, Norah and the boys could be seen across a field, riding; they had come across country, taking banks and ditches as they came, and were making towards a point where they were all to meet. John O’Neill looked at the racing trio with a smile.
“I was in a pretty bad way when Wally dropped on me in the boreen that morning,” he said, presently.
“He said you were suffering terribly,” David Linton said.
“Oh—that was nothing. I’m fairly well used to pain when my stupid attacks come on, though that had certainly been a stiff one. But—well, I think I was beginning to lose heart. My physical disadvantages have always been in my way, naturally; but I have managed to keep them in the background to a certain extent and live a man’s life, even in a second-rate fashion. But since the war began I couldn’t do it. I was so useless—a cumberer of the ground, when every man was needed. My people have always been fighters, until——until I came, to blot the record.”
“You have no right to say that,” said David Linton, sharply. “You did more than thousands of men are doing.”
“I did what I could. But I wanted to fight, man—to fight! If you knew how I envied every private I saw marching through London! every lucky youngster with a sound heart and a pair of straight shoulders. I had always set my teeth, before, and got through a man’s work, somehow or other. But here was something I couldn’t do—they wouldn’t have me. And even over what work I was able to tackle, I went to pieces. When I came back to Ireland I felt like rubbish, flung out of the way—out of the way of men who were men.”
“It’s not fair to feel like that,” David Linton said. “And it is not true.”