SIR PEARCE [grunts sulkily]!!

O'FLAHERTY [respectfully but doggedly]. And there's another thing
it's taught me too, sir, that concerns you and me, if I may make
bold to tell it to you.

SIR PEARCE [still sulky]. I hope it's nothing you oughtn't to say
to me, O'Flaherty.

O'FLAHERTY. It's this, sir: that I'm able to sit here now and
talk to you without humbugging you; and that's what not one of
your tenants or your tenants' childer ever did to you before in
all your long life. It's a true respect I'm showing you at last,
sir. Maybe you'd rather have me humbug you and tell you lies as I
used, just as the boys here, God help them, would rather have me
tell them how I fought the Kaiser, that all the world knows I
never saw in my life, than tell them the truth. But I can't take
advantage of you the way I used, not even if I seem to be wanting
in respect to you and cocked up by winning the Cross.

SIR PEARCE [touched]. Not at all, O'Flaherty. Not at all.

O'FLAHERTY. Sure what's the Cross to me, barring the little
pension it carries? Do you think I don't know that there's
hundreds of men as brave as me that never had the luck to get
anything for their bravery but a curse from the sergeant, and the
blame for the faults of them that ought to have been their
betters? I've learnt more than you'd think, sir; for how would a
gentleman like you know what a poor ignorant conceited creature I