"Well, good morning to you!"
He opened the door and was about to pass out of the restaurant when she spoke to him again.
"I wouldn't let a thing like that upset me if I was you," she said. "Sure, what's one girl more nor another girl! You'll get your pick and choice before long. A fine fellow like you'll not go begging for nothing!"
"I'm not letting it upset me," he said, "but it'll be the queer girl that'll make a fool of me in a hurry!"
"That's the spirit,'"' said Mrs. Bothwell.
IV
He walked down the stairs and into the street in a state of fury. He had been treated as if he were a corner-boy.
Willie Logan, who was any girl's boy, could not have been treated so contemptuously as he, who had never cared for any other girl, had been treated. She had married a policeman ... a peeler! She might as well have married a soldier or a militia-man. A MacDermott had been rejected in favour of a peeler! She had gone straight from his embraces to the embraces of a policeman ... a common policeman. She had refused to meet him on a Wednesday, he remembered, because, probably, she had engaged to meet the peeler on that evening. He would be off duty then! While she was yielding her lips to John, she was actually engaged to be married to ... to a policeman! By heaven!...
What a good and fortunate thing it was that he had not spoken of her to anyone except to Uncle Matthew! If anyone were to know that a MacDermott had fallen in love with a girl who had preferred to marry a peeler ... a peeler, mind you! ... they would split their sides laughing. What a humiliation! What an insufferable thing to have happened to him! That was your love for you! That was your romance for you! ... Och! Och, och!! This was a lesson for him, indeed. No more love or romance for him. Willie Logan could run after girls until the soles dropped off his boots, but John MacDermott would let the girls do the running after him in future. No girl would ever get the chance again to throw him over for ... for a peeler! If that was their love, they could keep their love!...
He walked about the town until, after a while, he found himself at the Theatre Royal. Still raging against Maggie, he paid for a seat in the pit. He had forgotten that he was in mourning, and he remembered only that he was a jilted lover, a MacDermott cast aside for a policeman. He sat through the first act of the play, without much comprehension of its theme. Then in the middle of the second act, he heard the heroine vowing that she loved the hero, and he got up and walked out of the theatre.