“You toldt me dot.”
“All right. They make good actors because they never forget their cues.”
“Yah! yah! yah!” cackled Toots, the colored boy, who had been keeping still and remaining in the background. “Land ob watermillions! dat boy Rattletum cayan’t help sayin’ dem fings. It jes’ comes nacheral wif dat boy.”
“Meester Raddleton must haf peen eatin’ eggs,” observed Hans, soberly. “He vos full uf yokes.”
Toots stared at Hans, and then, suddenly seeing the point, he had a fit. He laughed till Frank threw one of Browning’s bicycle shoes at him. The shoe struck the colored lad and knocked him off his chair to the floor. He picked himself up and sat down without a word, looking sad and subdued.
“Now, Barney,” said Frank, gravely, “be good enough to go on with your story. I think we have quieted the menagerie.”
“Begorra! Oi nivver saw such a crowd as this in all me loife,” declared the Irish lad. “It’s a jolly ould party it is.”
Then he began his story:
“It’s nivver a bit av money could Oi make in London, an’ so, whin Oi got a chance to go to Australia wid a foine gintlemon thot gave me a job on his ranch, Oi shnapped it up quicker thin ye could wink th’ two oies av yes.
“But afther Oi got there Oi didn’t loike the place a great dale. It wur too fur away from anything at all, at all, an’ it’s lonesome Oi got; so Oi wint to th’ gintlemon an’ told him. It’s a foine splindid mon he wur, fer he said to me, sez he, ‘Barney, me b’y, it’s sorry Oi am to have yez go, but Oi don’t want to kape ye av’ ye’re lonesome an’ homesick.’ Wid thot he wur afther givin’ me a roll av money thot he said Oi could pay back av Oi ivver got th’ chance, an’ Oi packed me hooker an’ shtarted fer Sydney.