Major's house, neither of them spoke. Then the Major broke the silence.

"I hope, O'Grady, that you're satisfied with that performance."

"To tell you the truth, Major, I'm not."

"I'm surprised to hear that," said the Major. "You've told the most
outrageous lies I ever heard. You've---"

"I gave the only possible explanation of a rather difficult situation."

"You've made a laughing stock of a respectable girl."

"I've given Mary Ellen a great uncle that she ought to be proud to own.
That's not what's bothering me."

"What is, then?"

"That American," said the doctor. "I don't at all like the way he's
going on. He's not by any means a fool----"

"He must be or he wouldn't have swallowed all those lies you told him in
the way he did. How could Mary Ellen possibly be------?"

"That's just it," said Dr. O'Grady. "He swallowed what I said far too
easily. The situation, owing to Thady Gallagher's want of presence of
mind, was complex, desperately complex. I got out of it as well as any
man could, but I don't deny that the explanation I gave--particularly
that part about Mary Ellen being engaged to young Kerrigan, was a bit
strained. I expected the American would have shied. But he didn't. He
swallowed it whole without so much as a choke. Now I don't think that
was quite natural. The fact is, Major, I'm uneasy about Billing. It
struck me that there was something rather odd in the way he repeated
my words about the General being a genuine democrat. He gave me the
impression that he was--well, trying to make fools of us."

"You were certainly trying to make a fool of him."

"I don't quite understand his game," said Dr. O'Grady, "if he has a
game. I may be wronging him. He may be simply an idiot, a well-meaning
idiot with a craze for statues."

"He must be," said the Major. "Nothing else would account for----"

"I doubt it," said Dr. O'Grady. "He doesn't look that kind of man.
However, there's no use talking any more about it to-night. I'll be in a
better position to judge when I've found out all there is to know about
this General of his. I'll write for the books I've mentioned, and I'll
write to a man I know in the National Library. If there's anything known
about the General on this side of the Atlantic he'll ferret it out for
me."

Dr. O'Grady stopped speaking. The Major supposed that he had stopped
thinking about Mr. Billing's curious conduct. The doctor did indeed
intend to stop thinking about it. But it