AUNT JUDY. Oh, the Lord knows! Romancin, I suppose. Props she
thinks Larry would go there to look for her and see her safe
home.

BROADBENT. I'm afraid it's all the fault of my motor. Miss Reilly
must not be left to wait and walk home alone at night. Shall I go
for her?

AUNT JUDY [contemptuously]. Arra hwat ud happen to her? Hurry in
now, Corny. Come, Mr Broadbent. I left the tea on the hob to
draw; and it'll be black if we don't go in an drink it.

They go up the hill. It is dark by this time.

Broadbent does not fare so badly after all at Aunt Judy's board.
He gets not only tea and bread-and-butter, but more mutton chops
than he has ever conceived it possible to eat at one sitting.
There is also a most filling substance called potato cake. Hardly
have his fears of being starved been replaced by his first
misgiving that he is eating too much and will be sorry for it
tomorrow, when his appetite is revived by the production of a
bottle of illicitly distilled whisky, called pocheen, which he
has read and dreamed of [he calls it pottine] and is now at last
to taste. His good humor rises almost to excitement before
Cornelius shows signs of sleepiness. The contrast between Aunt
Judy's table service and that of the south and east coast hotels
at which he spends his Fridays-to-Tuesdays when he is in London,
seems to him delightfully Irish. The almost total atrophy of any
sense of enjoyment in Cornelius, or even any desire for it or
toleration of the possibility of life being something better than