Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Bessie had no definite idea what the girl meant by spalpeens and bla'guards, whose eyes she was to shovel out, but she remembered what Neil had said about her attracting the notice of the upper deck passengers, and resolved more fully than ever to keep herself from sight as much as possible. She had a friend in Jennie, to whom she put numberless questions as to where she was going, and so forth.
He turned out to be quite human, beneath the outer crust of reserve. He continued his examination only after bribing the Spalpeens shamefully, so that even their rapacious demands were satisfied, and they trotted off contentedly. There followed a process which reduced me to a giggling heap but which Von Gerhard carried out ceremoniously.
The curtains very imperfectly kept out the rain, and we were in continual fear of an upset. At last the vehicle went down on one side, and all the Irish emigrants tumbled over each other and us, with a profusion of "Ochs," "murders," and "spalpeens." The driver composedly shouted to us to alight; the hole was only deep enough to sink the vehicle to the axletree.
The Irishman related his experience in as brief a manner as possible, the scout listening with a great deal of interest, and asking a question or two. "The luck was yer's," he said, when the narrator concluded, "of gettin' on the right track, while I got on the wrong." Mickey scratched his head in his old quizzical way. "The same luck befell the spalpeens and mesilf.
The children have appointed themselves official lickers and scrapers of the spoons and icing pans, also official guides on their auntie's walks. They regard their Aunt Dawn as a quite ridiculous but altogether delightful old thing. And Norah bless her! looks up when I come in from a romp with the Spalpeens and says: "Your cheeks are pink! Actually!
"I'll let the spalpeens alone if they'll do the same wid me," was his reply, spoken in a low voice, for the two were separated by only a few feet. "You can't have as good luck a second time." "But," persisted Tim, "if I hadn't dropped that felly, he would have tumbled you or mesilf out of the saddle, as he was about to do whin I jumped on him wid both feet."
I knowed it by its smallness, and by the print of them odd-shaped nails in your heel. Well, you see, that just set me wild. I knowed at once that by some hook or crook you had give the spalpeens the slip, and was wandering round kind of lost like mysilf.
"Aye, ye little dhivils, beggin' yer pardon, Masther Harry, an' thankin' the Howly Mither that their good-for-nothin' little bones ain't broke to bits. Av they saw a hippypottymus hitched to Pharaoh's chariot, they'd think 'emselves jist the byes to take the bossin' av it, the spalpeens."
'Of all the ould lazy-boots I ever see, ye're the biggest, apostrophizing the silent stoical Indians as he passed where they lounged; 'ye've a good right to be ashamed of yerselves, so ye have, for a set of idle spalpeens. The eldest of the trio removed his pipe for an instant and uttered the two words 'I savage. Andy's rhetoric had been totally incomprehensible.
"Begorra, but it's meself that has it!" exclaimed Mickey, with a sudden lighting up of the countenance; "they're the same two spalpeens that took your hoss down by the Staked Plain, and then follyed ye up and did the same thing over again, just as ye was going into Fort Severn." But the scout shook his head.
Word Of The Day