Mr. Cunningham laughed. He was a Castle official only during office hours.

“How could they be anything else, Tom?” he said.

He assumed a thick, provincial accent and said in a tone of command:

“65, catch your cabbage!”

Everyone laughed. Mr. M’Coy, who wanted to enter the conversation by any door, pretended that he had never heard the story. Mr. Cunningham said:

“It is supposed⁠—they say, you know⁠—to take place in the depot where they get these thundering big country fellows, omadhauns, you know, to drill. The sergeant makes them stand in a row against the wall and hold up their plates.”