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Through the open door Janet and her mother looking at each other with affrighted eyes could hear him sneering at intervals, "Ay, man!"... "Just that, now!"... "Im-phm!" And again, "Ay, ay!... Dee-ee-ar me!" in grim, falsetto irony. When he came back to the kitchen he turned to Janet, and left his son in a suspended agony.
"Ay," John gulped at last from a throat that felt closing. The answer seemed dragged out of him by the insistent silence. "Just so-a!" breathed his father, and his eyes opened in wide flame. He heaved with the great breath he drew.... "Im-phm!" he drawled. He went through to the scullery at the back of the kitchen to wash his hands.
"Dee-ee-ar me, dee-ee-ar me;" "Just so-a, just so-a;" "Im-phm!" "D'ye tell me that?" "Wonderful, serr, wonderful;" "Ah, well, may-ay-be, may-ay-be" these be words of potent irony when uttered with a certain birr. Long practice had made Gourlay an adept in their use. He never spoke to those he despised or disliked without "the birr."
"Open your mouth!" came the snarl "wider, damn ye! wider!" "Im-phm!" said Gourlay, with a critical drawl, pulling John's chin about to see into him the deeper. "Im-phm! God, it's like a furnace! What's the Latin for throat?" "Guttur," said John. "Gutter," said his father. "A verra appropriate name! Yours stinks like a cesspool! What have you been doing till't?
"Man Dyohn!" he said again, as if he could scarce believe the good news, and he waggled the other's hand up and down, with both his own clasped over it. "I'm proud to thee you, thir; I am that. And tho you're won hame, ay! Im-phm! And how are ye tummin on?" "Oh, I'm all right, Deacon," said Gourlay with a silly laugh. "Have a wet?" The whisky had begun to warm him.
"Ay, man!" he breathed.... "Ye've won hame, I observe!... Dee-ee-ar me!... Im-phm!" John could not speak; he was paralyzed by fear. To have this vast hostile force touch him, yet be still, struck him dumb. Why did his father not break out on him at once? What did he mean? What was he going to do?
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