Mr. Britling shrugged his shoulders, and his face betrayed despair.

“My one consolation,” he said, “in this storm is a talk I had last month with a young Irishwoman in Meath.  She was a young person of twelve, and she took a fancy to me—­I think because I went with her in an alleged dangerous canoe she was forbidden to navigate alone.  All day the eternal Irish Question had banged about over her observant head.  When we were out on the water she suddenly decided to set me right upon a disregarded essential.  ‘You English,’ she said, ’are just a bit disposed to take all this trouble seriously.  Don’t you fret yourself about it...  Half the time we’re just laffing at you.  You’d best leave us all alone....’”

And then he went off at a tangent from his own anecdote.

“But look at this miserable spectacle!” he cried.  “Here is a chance of getting something like a reconciliation of the old feud of English and Irish, and something like a settlement of these ancient distresses, and there seems no power, no conscience, no sanity in any of us, sufficient to save it from this cantankerous bitterness, this sheer wicked mischief of mutual exasperation....  Just when Ireland is getting a gleam of prosperity....  A murrain on both your parties!”

“I see, Mr. Britling, you’d hand us all over to Jim Larkin!”

“I’d hand you all over to Sir Horace Plunkett—­”

“That doctrinaire dairyman!” cried Lady Frensham, with an air of quite conclusive repartee.  “You’re hopeless, Mr. Britling.  You’re hopeless.”

And Lady Homartyn, seeing that the phase of mere personal verdicts drew near, created a diversion by giving Lady Frensham a second cup of tea, and fluttering like a cooling fan about the heated brows of the disputants.  She suggested tennis....

Section 5

Mr. Britling was still flushed and ruffled as he and his guest returned towards the Dower House.  He criticised England himself unmercifully, but he hated to think that in any respect she fell short of perfection; even her defects he liked to imagine were just a subtler kind of power and wisdom.  And Lady Frensham had stuck her voice and her gestures through all these amiable illusions.  He was like a lover who calls his lady a foolish rogue, and is startled to find that facts and strangers do literally agree with him.

But it was so difficult to resolve Lady Frensham and the Irish squabble generally into anything better than idiotic mischief, that for a time he was unusually silent—­wrestling with the problem, and Mr. Direck got the conversational initiative.

“To an American mind it’s a little—­startling,” said Mr. Direck, “to hear ladies expressing such vigorous political opinions.”