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Updated: June 16, 2025
Invariably we talk with feverish earnestness about the book; about my work at the office; about Ernst's profession, with its wonderful growth; about Norah, and Max and the Spalpeens, and the home; about the latest news; about the weather; about Peter Orme and then silence. At our last meeting things took a new and startling turn.
"Being as there isn't room to squaze in wid ye, I'll take my stand a little out here, where I can secure the protection of a similar piece of masonry, and where the spalpeens can't git by me without giving the countersign and showing a pass."
"And it's sitting him a-fighting, is it, ye spalpeens?" cried the fellow, with a Hibernian accent that was not to be mistaken; and he looked around the crowd, as though he wished some one would pick a quarrel with him, for the sake of variety. "And it's bushrangers ye think they is, do ye?" the Irishman continued, scornfully; "do ye think ye would know a thafe if ye seed one?
Somehow or other, Terry seemed to be thinking more about the three Winnebago horsemen with whom Fred Linden had had his encounter than he did about his own experience. "How thim spalpeens could be ridin', whin all the rist are afoot, is somethin' that puzzles me," said he, after they had walked some distance further; "can't ye give some explanation that will relaave me mind, Fred?"
I make six false starts, bite all my best finger-nails, screw my hair into a wilderness of cork-screws and give it up. No doubt a real Lady Writer could write on, unruffled and unhearing, while the iceman squashed the cucumbers, and the roast burned to a frazzle, and the Spalpeens perished of hunger.
Certainly not I; and, as I dashed in, Pat Doolan followed my example, the cook uttering a wild Irish yell that had the effect of animating several of the rest of the sailors to lend us a helping hand, although they had not the pluck to dash in too. "Hooroo, boys!" he shouted. "Follow me leader, ye spalpeens, and let us say who'll raich the poor drowning chap first! Ould Oireland for iver!"
The people, like Oliver, “asked for more;” ungrateful people! not content with Father Glynn at the viceroy’s table, and the Bishop of “Mesopotamia” in the council, they cried, like the horseleech’s daughters, “Give! give!” “What would they have, the spalpeens?” said Pierce Mahony; “sure ain’t we destroying the place entirely, and nobody will be able to live here after us.”
"Och! the blackguards!" exclaimed Phil Briant, all his blood rising at the mere mention of the horrible traffic; "couldn't we land, capting, and give them a lickin'? I'll engage meself to put six at laste o' the spalpeens on their beam-ends." "No, Phil, we shan't land for that purpose; but we'll land for some gunpowder an' a barrel or two of plantains; so give way, lads."
Goodnough had gone at once with her daughter who had met her at the wharf, but Jennie's cousin, who lived out of the city, had sent her husband to the ship, and, as he was porter in one of the large warehouses, and did not go home till night, Jennie had leisure to attend to Bessie, whom she saw to the train, and to whom she said at parting: "Keep yer vail down, honey, for there's spalpeens an' bla'guards everywhere, and they might be for spakin to ye.
I looked at them at those three who had done so much for my happiness and well being, and something within me said: "Now! Speak now!" Norah was playing very softly, so that the Spalpeens upstairs might not be disturbed. I took a long breath and made the plunge. "Norah, if you'll continue the slow music, I'll be much obliged. 'The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things."
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