reduced the number of guardsmen to six?

O'FLAHERTY. You're not used to telling lies like I am, sir. I got
great practice at home with my mother. What with saving my skin
when I was young and thoughtless, and sparing her feelings when I
was old enough to understand them, I've hardly told my mother the
truth twice a year since I was born; and would you have me turn
round on her and tell it now, when she's looking to have some
peace and quiet in her old age?

SIR PEARCE (troubled in his conscience]. Well, it's not my
affair, of course, O'Flaherty. But hadn't you better talk to
Father Quinlan about it?

O'FLAHERTY. Talk to Father Quinlan, is it! Do you know what
Father Quinlan says to me this very morning?

SIR PEARCE. Oh, you've seen him already, have you? What did he
say?

O'FLAHERTY. He says "You know, don't you," he says, "that it's
your duty, as a Christian and a good son of the Holy Church, to
love your enemies?" he says. "I know it's my juty as a soldier to
kill them," I says. "That's right, Dinny," he says: "quite right.
But," says he, "you can kill them and do them a good turn
afterward to show your love for them" he says; "and it's your
duty to have a mass said for the souls of the hundreds of Germans
you say you killed," says he; "for many and many of them were
Bavarians and good Catholics," he says. "Is it me that must pay
for masses for the souls of the Boshes?" I says. "Let the King of