would resent his supposed condition. And he has no suspicion of
the fact, or of her ignorance of it, that when an Englishman is
sentimental he behaves very much as an Irishman does when he is
drunk].



ACT III

Next morning Broadbent and Larry are sitting at the ends of a
breakfast table in the middle of a small grass plot before
Cornelius Doyle's house. They have finished their meal, and are
buried in newspapers. Most of the crockery is crowded upon a
large square black tray of japanned metal. The teapot is of brown
delft ware. There is no silver; and the butter, on a dinner
plate, is en bloc. The background to this breakfast is the house,
a small white slated building, accessible by a half-glazed door.
A person coming out into the garden by this door would find the
table straight in front of him, and a gate leading to the road
half way down the garden on his right; or, if he turned sharp to
his left, he could pass round the end of the house through an
unkempt shrubbery. The mutilated remnant of a huge planter
statue, nearly dissolved by the rains of a century, and vaguely
resembling a majestic female in Roman draperies, with a wreath in
her hand, stands neglected amid the laurels. Such statues, though
apparently works of art, grow naturally in Irish gardens. Their
germination is a mystery to the oldest inhabitants, to whose
means and taste they are totally foreign.

There is a rustic bench, much roiled by the birds, and