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By Root 5472 0

shoulder,” murmuring that she should accord him “a hug.” Naturally, he had received a tongue-lashing for his trouble. Yet he had stood there grinning and red-faced (the blush, she realized, was permanent), quite unabashed. What did the Major make of her predicament? Did he not agree that it would be better to accept the rigours of spinsterhood and penury (“your mother and I won’t always be here to look after you, you know”) rather than submit to such a grisly fate? Indeed, her only support in the matter had come from a totally unsuspected source, namely the incredibly ancient and insufferable Dr Ryan whom she had always thought of as her “arch-enemy.” He had told her father flatly that he would as soon see her marry a gorilla in the Dublin Zoo as the above-mentioned peasant Lothario and that if he so much as heard mention of the matter again he would see to it that all his patients in Kilnalough transferred their business to some other bank. So for the moment there was an armistice. But for how long? The more he thought about it the more her father wanted to marry her off. So no wonder that she had been overtaken by her “unmentionable illness.” Perhaps, like poor Angela, she would just wilt away and probably no one would care. The Major, she was certain, wouldn’t care in the least.

And who knew? Perhaps her parents were right. Perhaps there was no real difference between one man and another. After all (she sometimes found herself thinking, sinful though such thoughts were), after all, are we so very different from animals? And animals made less fuss about such matters.

By the way, she had forgotten to mention one curious thing about the “rural swain” (whose name was Mulcahy, incidentally): in his lapel he wore a plain gold ring. She had asked him what it meant. “An Fáinne,” he had replied: Oh, she had eyes in her head, she had told him impatiently. But what was it for, that was what she wanted to know? Oh, so she “had the Irish”? Just a little, she had admitted, not wanting to encourage his respect. Well, it was like a circle for Irish-speaking people, he had explained, so that they might recognize each other by the ring and talk to each other in Irish rather than in the tongue of the foreigner. They had a retreat, it appeared: a number of young men and women anxious to perfect themselves in the ancestral language of Ireland, all off in a cottage in the depths of the country somewhere chattering away in Irish from morn till night. Had the Major ever heard of such a wonderful idea? She had to admit that that was one point in Mulcahy’s favour (admittedly, the only one). He had even asked her to join the circle (though no doubt his motives were impure). So the “rural swain,” though he did not do at all, though he was impossible, at least had gained a meagre point.

A few days later she had met a young Englishman, an officer from the Curragh camp staying with his uncle for a few days, and she had told him about this idea of people speaking Irish to each other. “How bizarre!” he had exclaimed. “How delightful! How original!” and he had told her about a club he had joined at Oxford which specialized in trying to make contact with poltergeists in haunted houses.

Ah, but the Major wouldn’t be interested in all this dull tattle from the provinces since he was in London at the very centre of things, at the very centre of the Empire, of “Life” even! She had abused his good nature by rambling on so long about herself and her own petty problems. He must think of her as she herself thought of the bovine aspirant for her affections, Mulcahy. And besides, besides, her fingers were now frozen to the point where they were practically “dropping off,” the hot-water bottles were lumps of ice on every side of her, her ink-well too was freezing over and her room was so cold that with every breath the paper she was writing on would disappear in a cloud of steam. The weather was quite appalling, cold and damp beyond belief, and the days so dark that even at midday one had to turn up the gas mantle in order to read a book or do some sewing. What