“You do, you Madame,” he says, “you woman! You hide them, my enemies, insulters!”
“You would do best,” she says to Flannagan, “without doubt, now to enclose and suppress him, my Georgio.”
“I go! I return!” he says, stamping his feet.
“Nayther,” says Flannagan, enclosing his collar with one hand, and suppressing his features with the other. “Ye sits in the chair, me little man. Ye smokes a cigar in genteel conviviality afther coolin' down to be recognised by a thermometer—an' ye listens to the advice of your beaucheous an' accomplished lady,” he says, “that has in moind a bit of domestic discipline.”
He dropped him in a chair facing Madame Bill. David, in the next chair, woke up, and appeared to say to himself, “They're doing something else,” and went to sleep again. The tin-type man sat by the window and looked through the shutters at the Plaza. They were making a noise on the Plaza. Now and then a military let off his gun, and the people shouted as if they wanted him to do it again. The Japanese bowed to Bill across the table, and smiled mystical.
“By the tomb of my mother, you shall pay!” gurgled Bill.
“Come off!” says Flannagan kindly. “She hadn't any tomb, an' ye disremember who she was.”
“Why,” says Madame Bill, “the Senor Flannagan on that point speaks nearly the truth.”
“A-r-r-r! I'll have your blood!” says the Minister.
“An' me givin' ye the soft word,” says Flannagan, “an' apologies for takin' ye for a decorated rubber ball, an' bouncin' ye on the floor! 'Twas wrong of me. Sure, now, Misther Bill, an' is there more needed between gentlemen?” He looked for help to Madame Bill, who gazed at the smoke of her cheroot and seemed absent-minded.