Enter seventeen-year-old Sean McBride. Places back against the door. Blue
eyes wide. Breathlessly: "They're after Bob Barton and Michael Collins.
They've surrounded the Mansion House."

Hatless we raced across Stephen's Green--that little handkerchief of a park
that never seemed so embroidered with turns and bridges and bandstands and
duck ponds before. Through the crowd that had already gathered we edged our
way till we came to the double line of bayonets and batons that guarded the
entrance to Dawson street. Over the broad, blue shoulder of the policeman
directly in front of me, I glimpsed a wicked-looking little whippet tank
with two very conscious British officers just head and shoulders out. Still
further down were three covered motor lorries that had been used to convey
the soldiers.

Sean, for the especial benefit of constable just ahead: "Wars for democracy
and small nations! And that's the only way they can keep us in the British
empire. Brute force. Nice exhibition for the American journalists in town."

Constable stalked Sean back to edge of crowd. Sean looked at him steadily
with slight twinkle in his eye. Miss Barton, Miss Pankhurst, and I climbed
up a low stone wall that commanded the guarded street, and clung to the
iron paling on top. Sean came and stood beneath.

Miss Pankhurst, regarding crowd in puzzled manner: "Why do you all smile?
When the suffragists were arrested we used to become furious."

Sean looking up at her in kindly manner in which old rebel might glance at
impatient young rebel: "You forget. We're very used to this."