“Well, what of Florazora?” I asked.  “It’s evident she has never entered into your life, at any rate.”

“That’s all you know about it,” said Andy.  “They’re sitting up for me with blunderbusses and brickbats at home, and ‘Florazora’ is the cause.”

“But how?” I asked.

“Ye’ll discover if ye’ll let me speak for a half a minute.  I may admit to you I was very sweet on a little girl that was staying with the MacManuses a while back, so I bought a bottle of that stuff to keep my hair down while I was pitching her the yarn.  I cornered the lass alone in the MacManus’ drawing-room, went down on my knees and threw off a dandy proposal I had learnt by heart out of a book.  The girl curled about all over the sofa with emotion, and for a bit I thought my eloquence was doing it.  Then I perceived she was near shaken to pieces with laughter.  Couldn’t think why till I happened to catch sight of myself in a mirror and saw that my darned old hair had come unstuck again and was bobbing up all over my head, not singly as it is now, but a cockatoo tuft at a time, thanks to ‘Florazora.’  I rose up off the MacManus carpet and ran all the way home.”

“Still I don’t see—­” I began.

“Ye never will if ye don’t give me a chance to tell ye,” said Andy.

“Do ye remember that greasy divil Peter Flynn that owns a draper’s shop in Ballinknock main street?  A fat man he is with the flowing locks of a stump orator, given to fancy waistcoats and a frock-coat—­very dressy.  Ye’d see him standing at the shop-door on fair-days, bobbing to the women and how-dy-doin’ the country boys the way he’d tout a vote or two, he being the leading Sinn Fein organiser down our way now.  Anyhow he and his raparees got after me and the hunt, on account of me evicting a tenant that hadn’t paid a penny of rent for seven years and didn’t ever intend to.  They hinted to the decent poor farmers round about that there’d be ricks fired and cows ripped if they allowed me to hunt their lands, so I got stopped everywhere.  I had land enough of my own to carry on with, so I hunted there till the foxes and hares gave out, which they precious soon did, seeing that half the neighbourhood was out shooting, trapping, poisoning and lurching them.

“I bought a stag from a feller in Limerick and chased that for a bit; then on a ’tween day, when I was away and the deer out grazing in the demesne, somebody slipped a brace of Mauser bullets into it, and that form of diversion was likewise at an end.  As far as I could see an animal wouldn’t stand a ten minutes’ chance in my country unless it were an armadillo.

“I wrote to the War Office, asking them could they kindly oblige me with the loan of a lively little tank for pursuing purposes, but got no answer.  I guess WINSTON had a liver on him that morning.  So there was nothing for it but to give up the hounds.  I went and broke the sad news to Patsey Mike, who was mixing stirabout at the time.  ’Oh, God save us, don’t be doing that, Sor,’ says he.  ‘Hoult hard a day or so and I’ll be afther findin’ some little object to hunt, that them dirthy blagyards won’t shoot at all.’