’If you’d have the goodness to kindle his enthusiasm, he’d be for the first person plural, with his cap in the air,’ said Patrick.

’I detest enthusiasm.

’You’re not obliged to adore it to give it a wakener.

‘Pray, what does that mean?’

Patrick cast about to reply to the formal challenge for an explanation.

He began on it as it surged up to him:  ’Well, sir, the country that’s got hold of us, if we ’re not to get loose.  We don’t count many millions in Europe, and there’s no shame in submitting to force majeure, if a stand was once made; and we’re mixed up, ’tis true, well or ill; and we’re stronger, both of us, united than tearing to strips:  and so, there, for the past! so long as we can set our eyes upon something to admire, instead of a bundle squatting fat on a pile of possessions and vowing she won’t budge; and taking kicks from a big foot across the Atlantic, and shaking bayonets out of her mob-cap for a little one’s cock of the eye at her:  and she’s all for the fleshpots, and calls the rest of mankind fools because they’re not the same:  and so long as she can trim her ribands and have her hot toast and tea, with a suspicion of a dram in it, she doesn’t mind how heavy she sits:  nor that ’s not the point, nor ’s the land question, nor the potato crop, if only she wore the right sort of face to look at, with a bit of brightness about it, to show an idea inside striking alight from the day that’s not yet nodding at us, as the tops of big mountains do:  or if she were only braced and gallant, and cried, Ready, though I haven’t much outlook!  We’d be satisfied with her for a handsome figure.  I don’t know whether we wouldn’t be satisfied with her for politeness in her manners.  We’d like her better for a spice of devotion to alight higher up in politics and religion.  But the key of the difficulty’s a sparkle of enthusiasm.  It’s part business, and the greater part sentiment.  We want a rousing in the heart of us; or else we’d be pleased with her for sitting so as not to overlap us entirely:  we’d feel more at home, and behold her more respectfully.  We’d see the policy of an honourable union, and be joined to you by more than a telegraphic cable.  That’s Captain Con, I think, and many like him.’

Patrick finished his airy sketch of the Irish case in a key signifying that he might be one among the many, but unobtrusive.

‘Stick to horses!’ observed Mr. Adister.

It was pronounced as the termination to sheer maundering.

Patrick talked on the uppermost topic for the remainder of their stroll.

He noticed that his host occasionally allowed himself to say, ’You Irish’:  and he reflected that the saying, ‘You English,’ had been hinted as an offence.