He could say no more, as both dogs had sprung from Christian’s arms, and were feverishly licking his face.

“Your own fault!” said Christian, answering his expostulations.  “Kind little things, they thought you asked for it.”

“I repeat,” said Larry, lying on his back, and holding off his assailants with difficulty, “eliminating badly brought-up dogs, that Ireland is the finest country in the world, and—­listen to this, Christian!—­the Irish are the finest people, and the worst governed!”

“’The foinest pisanthry in Europe’!” said Christian, in gibing exaggeration.  “Larry, you’ve got awfully English!” Larry rolled over and came into play again, sitting bolt upright; “I’m a Home Ruler!”

“Don’t be absurd,” said Christian, tranquilly.

“I’m not the least absurd,” returned Larry.  “I mean it.  If not a Republican!” he added, ostentatiously, and began to chant: 

  “And Ireland shall be free,
  From the centre to the sea,
  And huzza for Libertee,
  Says the Shan Van Voght!”

“I say, you remember the old companions of Finn?  Well they’re rolling up again!  I’ve started them at Oxford.  Six members already!  Two men in my college, and—­”

“English, of course!” interrupted Christian, with an effective tone of elderly superiority.  “People like yourself, who know nothing about it!”

This was an insult not easily to be tolerated; the gage of battle did not lie long at Larry’s feet, and it may be admitted that the challenger would have been ill pleased had it been ignored.

In the five years that had passed since the curtain of this narrative went down on Christian, she had changed more than had Larry.  It was as though that extra-worldly endowment of her childhood having ceased to manifest in external ways, had turned its light inwards.  The power of hearing what others could not hear, had faded, but a subtlety of mind, a clarity, a sort of pondering, intellectual self-consciousness (that had no kinship with that other form of self-consciousness that is only inverted self-conceit) had taken the place of those voices that she had once refused to deny to the inquisitorial John.

The battle, with regard to the resurrected Companions of Finn, having waxed and waned in a course that need not here be followed, the argument took on another phase.

“You know, Larry,” Christian said, half-absently twisting and arranging Dooley’s little tan ears, in order to express, on Dooley’s behalf, with them, various emotions, “it seems to me that all these political revolutions that you are so anxious to start, for the good of Ireland, are like putting the cart before the horse.”

“What do you mean?” asked Larry, eyeing her with undisguised surprise.

“Well,” said Christian, slowly, gazing across the valley with eyes more than ever like the clearest brown stream, “you’ve got to begin with the individual.  After all, Ireland is made up of individuals, and each of them contributes in some way to the big result.  It seems to me that the real Spirit of the Nation is—­is—­”