her that he was not a tongue-tied fool; that he also, like Larry, was
a man of ideas.

"I wish to God!" he said, with the disordered violence of a shy man,
"that there was anny league or society in Ireland that would override
class prejudice, and oblitherate religious bigotry!"

He had snatched a paragraph from his last address to the Gaelic
Leaguers of Cluhir, and with it was betrayed into the pronunciation
that mastered him in moments of excitement.

Christian said to herself that she thanked heaven Judith wasn't there
to make her laugh.

"I don't _think_ I'm a religious bigot," she said, with a faint
tremor in her voice, "but one never knows!" Her head was bent down,
the brim of her large hat hid her face.

Barty was stricken. What devil had possessed him? She was hurt! She
was a Protestant, and in his cursed folly he had made her think he was
reproaching her for Bigotry. Good God! What could he do?

Two emotions, hung, as it were, on hair-triggers, held the stage. In
Christian, the fiend of laughter held sway, in poor Barty, the angel
of tears. It was perhaps well for them both that their next step in
advance took them round a bend in the path, and brought them face to
face with the picnic.