top of a hill and sank
out of sight a last wave of the priestly hand seemed to include us.
Doubtless we were being expounded as English tourists, and our great
economic value to the country was being expatiated upon. The _role_ is
an important one, and has its privileges; yet, to the wolf, there is
something stifling in sheep's clothing; certainly, on the occasions
when it was discarded by us, a sympathy and understanding with the
hotels was quickly established. Possibly they also are wolves.
Undoubtedly the English tourist, with his circular ticket and his
coupons, does not invariably get the best of everything. We write
surrounded by him and his sufferings. An earlier visit than usual to the
hotel sitting-room has revealed him, lying miserably on the sofa,
shrouded in a filthy _duvet_, having been flung there at some two in the
morning on his arrival, wet through, from heaven knows what tremendous
walk. Subsequently we hear him being haled from his lair by the
chambermaid, who treats him as the dirt under her feet (or, indeed, if
we may judge by our bedroom carpet, with far less consideration).

"Here!" she says, "go in there and wash yerself!"

We hear her slamming him into a room from which two others of his kind
have been recently bolted like rabbits, by the boots, to catch the 6
A.M. train. We can just faintly realise its atmosphere.

This, however, is a digression, but remotely connected with Letterbeg
and Mr. Heraty's window, to which in our forlorn state we turned for
distraction.

It was very small, about two feet square, but it made its appeal to all
the needs of humanity from the cradle to the grave. A feeding-bottle, a
rosary, a photograph of Mr. Kruger, a peg-top, a case of salmon flies,
an artistic letter-weight, consisting of a pigeon's egg carved in
Connemara marble, two seductively small bottles of castor-oil--these,
mounted on an embankment of packets of corn-flour and rat poison,
crowded the four little panes. Inside the shop the assortment ranged
from bundles of reaping-hooks on the earthen floor to bottles of
champagne in the murk of the top shelf. A few men leaned against the
tin-covered counter, gravely drinking porter. As we stood dubiously at
the door there was a padding of bare feet in the roadway, and a very
small boy with a red head, dressed in a long flannel frock of a rich
madder shade fluttered past us into the shop.

"Me dada says let yees be hurrying!" he gasped, between spasms of