"That's why I'm a Home Ruler," Henry replied. "If you chaff these people, they get angry and want to fight. If anybody were to get up in a public hall and say about the Irish one-quarter of the things that Bernard Shaw says in public about the English, the audience would flay him alive and wreck the building. They're too little to stand chaff easily. It takes a big people to bear criticism good-naturedly.... All the same, Gilbert, your damned countrymen are to blame for all this!"
"I know that," said Gilbert, "but your damned countrymen seem determined to remain like it!"
8
Mr. Quinn and Henry had talked of Ireland and of John Marsh, after John had returned to Dublin.
"Sometimes," said Mr. Quinn, "I think that the best thing for Ireland would be to let the two sides fight. That might bring them together. One damned good scrap ... and they might shake hands and become reconciled. There was as much antagonism and bitterness between the North and South in America as there is between the North and South in Ireland ... and on the whole, I think the Civil War did a lot of good!"
"It's a damned queer country, Henry!" he went on, lying down and drawing the bedclothes up about his neck. "Damned queer!"
"I suppose they all know what they're up to," he continued, looking intently at the ceiling. "But I don't!"
"Are you comfortable, father?" Henry asked, bending anxiously over Mr. Quinn who had a grey, tired look on his face.
"Yes, thank you, Henry, I'm ... I'm comfortable enough!" He turned his head slightly and gazed at Henry for a few moments without speaking. Then he smiled at him. "I tried hard to make an Irishman out of you, Henry," he said.