yourself. Waste, waste; nothing but idleness and waste all round.
God help me! (_Coughs._)

_Sheila pours out a cup of tea and hands it to Mrs. Grogan._

_Sheila_. Drink that drop of tea, granny--it's fresh made.

_Mrs. Grogan_. What did you do with the bottom of the pot? Threw it
to the ducks, I suppose?

_Sheila_ (_pointing to the table_). I have it here for myself,
granny.

_Mrs. Grogan_ (_sipping tea_). When I was a girl I never got a sup
o' tea from year's end to year's end.

_Sheila_. It was very dear, then; wasn't it?

_Mrs. Grogan_. It's dear enough still with everybody using it all
day long. Did you feed the hens?

_Sheila_. Long ago, and let the ducks out, too.

_Mrs. Grogan_. I suppose it's in the oats they'll be by this time.
What about the calves? _Grogan goes out_.

_Sheila_. I gave them their milk and put them in the bawn.

_Mrs. Grogan_. With the linen on the hedge? Why, they'll chew it
into rags, and, maybe, choke themselves.

_Sheila_. No, granny, dear; I spread the linen in the upper garden,
where the sun comes the earliest.

_Mrs. Grogan_. I see it's stole ye want it. There's half a dozen
tinkers squatted in the quarry.

_Sheila_ (_wearily._) They went a week ago.

_Mrs. Grogan_. Ah, dear! There's what it is to be old! I never hear
anything that's going on now till it's all over. Is that egg
boiled?

_Sheila_. Granny, dear, I thought you couldn't take one.

_Mrs. Grogan_. It's the little bit I eat that's grudged me now, I
see.

Though there is little of it in this passage that I quote, the
picturesque phrase that no Irish writer is without is Mr. Boyle's, as a
matter of course, but there is no particular individuality in his
handling of it. Style he has not, nor any background of romance, or
beauty of that sort that illumines the grayness of the comedies of
Ibsen, or of any other sort of beauty than that approach to beauty there
is in skilled craftsmanship.

Admirably arranged, too, are the situations of "The Eloquent Dempsey," a
satire on the man who straddles all questions, as at one time, at any
rate, did so many Irish politicians. Dempsey might have continued his
career of straddling indefinitely had he not a mania for speech-making
that he could not control. In the end, however, he was undone by a
well-intentioned conspiracy,