Nora.  Mr Keegan:  I want to speak to you a minute if you don’t mind.

Keegan [dropping the broad Irish vernacular of his speech to Patsy].  An hour if you like, Miss Reilly:  you’re always welcome.  Shall we sit down?

Nora.  Thank you. [They sit on the heather.  She is shy and anxious; but she comes to the point promptly because she can think of nothing else].  They say you did a gradle o travelling at one time.

Keegan.  Well you see I’m not a Mnooth man [he means that he was not a student at Maynooth College].  When I was young I admired the older generation of priests that had been educated in Salamanca.  So when I felt sure of my vocation I went to Salamanca.  Then I walked from Salamanca to Rome, an sted in a monastery there for a year.  My pilgrimage to Rome taught me that walking is a better way of travelling than the train; so I walked from Rome to the Sorbonne in Paris; and I wish I could have walked from Paris to Oxford; for I was very sick on the sea.  After a year of Oxford I had to walk to Jerusalem to walk the Oxford feeling off me.  From Jerusalem I came back to Patmos, and spent six months at the monastery of Mount Athos.  From that I came to Ireland and settled down as a parish priest until I went mad.

Nora [startled].  Oh dons say that.

Keegan.  Why not?  Don’t you know the story? how I confessed a black man and gave him absolution; and how he put a spell on me and drove me mad.

Nora.  How can you talk such nonsense about yourself?  For shame!

Keegan.  It’s not nonsense at all:  it’s true—­in a way.  But never mind the black man.  Now that you know what a travelled man I am, what can I do for you? [She hesitates and plucks nervously at the heather.  He stays her hand gently].  Dear Miss Nora:  don’t pluck the little flower.  If it was a pretty baby you wouldn’t want to pull its head off and stick it in a vawse o water to look at. [The grasshopper chirps:  Keegan turns his head and addresses it in the vernacular].  Be aisy, me son:  she won’t spoil the swing-swong in your little three. [To Nora, resuming his urbane style] You see I’m quite cracked; but never mind:  I’m harmless.  Now what is it?

Nora [embarrassed].  Oh, only idle curiosity.  I wanted to know whether you found Ireland—­I mean the country part of Ireland, of course—­very small and backwardlike when you came back to it from Rome and Oxford and all the great cities.

Keegan.  When I went to those great cities I saw wonders I had never seen in Ireland.  But when I came back to Ireland I found all the wonders there waiting for me.  You see they had been there all the time; but my eyes had never been opened to them.  I did not know what my own house was like, because I had never been outside it.

Nora.  D’ye think that’s the same with everybody?

Keegan.  With everybody who has eyes in his soul as well as in his head.