United States or Taiwan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
As for Mr. and Mrs. Jerry, they were so proud of their wonderful kid, who could swear in English as good as a real American, that they were in the seventh heaven. When the meal was over, Hal leaned back and exclaimed, just as he had at the Rafferties', "Lord, how I wish I could board here!" He saw his host look at his wife. "All right," said he. "You come here. I board you. Hey, Rosa?"
It was when Hal went to pay another call upon the Rafferties that he made this discovery. Mary Burke happened to be there, and when she caught sight of him, her grey eyes beamed with mischief. "How do ye do, Mr. Minetti?" she cried. "How do ye do, Miss Rosetti?" he countered. "You lika da spagett?" "You no lika da spagett?"
Hal and Keating set out; they went first to the Rafferties', and saw Mrs. Rafferty spring up and stare at them, and then scream aloud to the Holy Virgin, waking all the little Rafferties to frightened clamour.
And Old Rafferty, with all his little Rafferties, and his piteous efforts to keep the favour of his employers! And poor Patrick Burke, whom Hal had never seen sober; doubtless he was sober now, if he was still alive!
Hal, when he had grasped the situation, was tempted to retaliate by reminding them that he had offered to board with the Irish, and been turned down; but he feared that the elder Rafferty might not appreciate this joke, so instead he pretended to have supposed all along that the Rafferties were Italians.
Being a mere man, Hal missed one important point about this startling development; he did not realise that Mary's eloquence was addressed, not merely to the Rafferties and the Wauchopes, and the rest of the North Valley mine-slaves, but to a certain magazine-cover girl, clad in a mackintosh and a pale green hat and a soft and filmy and horribly expensive motoring veil!
First among these friends was Mary Burke, whom he had had no chance to talk to since the meeting with Jessie. He realised that Mary had been deliberately avoiding him. She was not in her home, and he went to inquire at the Rafferties', and stopped for a good-bye chat with the old woman whose husband he had saved. Rafferty was going to pull through.
There were lace curtains in the windows, even shinier and whiter than at the Rafferties; there was an incredibly bright-coloured rug on the floor, and bright coloured pictures of Mount Vesuvius and of Garibaldi on the walls.
The mother of the family was a gaunt, grey-haired woman, with no teeth, but with a warm heart. Hal took to her, because her home was clean; he sat on the family door-step, amid a crowd of little Rafferties with newly-washed Sunday faces, and fascinated them with tales of adventures cribbed from Clark Russell and Captain Mayne Reid.
Word Of The Day