spots; but in the main it is by living with you and working in
double harness with you that I have learnt to live in a real
world and not in an imaginary one. I owe more to you than to any
Irishman.

BROADBENT [shaking his head with a twinkle in his eye]. Very
friendly of you, Larry, old man, but all blarney. I like blarney;
but it's rot, all the same.

DOYLE. No it's not. I should never have done anything without
you; although I never stop wondering at that blessed old head of
yours with all its ideas in watertight compartments, and all the
compartments warranted impervious to anything that it doesn't
suit you to understand.

BROADBENT [invincible]. Unmitigated rot, Larry, I assure you.

DOYLE. Well, at any rate you will admit that all my friends are
either Englishmen or men of the big world that belongs to the big
Powers. All the serious part of my life has been lived in that
atmosphere: all the serious part of my work has been done with
men of that sort. Just think of me as I am now going back to
Rosscullen! to that hell of littleness and monotony! How am I to
get on with a little country landagent that ekes out his 5 per
cent with a little farming and a scrap of house property in the
nearest country town? What am I to say to him? What is he to say
to me?

BROADBFNT [scandalized]. But you're father and son, man!