"You should have your dinner in the middle of the day, like us," she answered, and added, decisively, "It's half-seven or never!"
"All right," he exclaimed, stooping down carefully and putting his feet on a rung of the ladder. "I'll come for you then. I'll manage it somehow."
4
He told his father that he did not want any dinner. John Marsh had enquired about his headache, and Henry had said that it was better, but that he thought he would like to be quiet that evening. He said, too, that he had made up his mind to go for a long, lonely walk. "But what about your dinner?" Mr. Quinn had said, and he had answered that he did not want any. "If I'm hungry," he added, "I can have something before I go to bed."
He felt vaguely irritated with John Marsh who first pestered him ... that was the word Henry used in his mind ... with sympathy and then lamented that his headache would prevent him from helping that evening at the Gaelic language class. "Still, I suppose well manage," he ended regretfully.
"I don't suppose there'll be many at the class," Henry replied almost sneeringly.
"Why?" said Marsh.
"Oh, well," Henry went on, "after last night!..."
"You mean that they think more of dancing than they do of the language?" Marsh interrupted, and there was so much of anxiety in the tone of his voice that Henry regretted that he had sneered at him.
"Well, that's natural," he said, trying to think of some phrase that would mitigate the unkindness of what he was saying, and failing to think of it. "After all, it is much more fun to dance than to learn grammar...."