Charlie Ward. Oh, I didn't lose sight of you so much as you thought. I had to stop away from Gortmore a good while after we left you at the gate, but I sent Paddy Cockfight one time to get news, and he mended cans for the laundry of the monastery, and they told him you were well again, and a monk as good as the rest. But a while ago I got word there was a monk had gone near to break up the whole monastery with his talk and his piety, and I said to myself, "That's Paul!" And then I heard there was a monk had been driven out for not keeping the rules, and I said to myself, "That's Paul!" And the other day when what's left of us came to Athlone, I heard talk of some disfrocked monks that were upsetting the whole neighbourhood, and I said, "That's Paul." To Sabina Silver I said that. "That merry chap Paul," I said.
Paul Ruttledge. I'm afraid you have a very bad opinion of me, Charlie. Well, maybe I earned it.
Aloysius. You cannot know much of him if you have a bad opinion of him. He will be made a saint some day.
Charlie Ward. He will, if there's such a thing as a saint of mischief.
Paul Ruttledge. A saint of mischief? Well, why not that as well as another? He would upset all the beehives, he would throw them into the market-place. Sit down now, Charlie, and eat a bit with us.
Colman. You are welcome, indeed, to all we can give you, but we have not a bit of food that is worth offering you. Aloysius got nothing at all in the villages to-day, Brother Paul. The people are getting cross.
Paul Ruttledge. Well, sit down, anyway. The country people liked me well enough once, there was no man they liked so much as myself when I gave them drink for nothing. Didn't they, Charlie?
Charlie Ward. Oh, that was a great time. They were lying thick about the roads. I'll be thinking of it to my dying day.
Paul Ruttledge. I have given them another kind of drink now.
Charlie Ward. What sort of a drink is that?