“Come back an’ put on yer clothes,” he said. “They do be fittin’ yez betther nor they would me. Yer money I’ll take, for ye’ll worrk the harder for bein’ broke, but yer house I don’t want. Yer a man, afther all, Gallagher, an’ I’ll hire you over again. There’s a boat whistlin’ on the river now, an’ ye’ll hustle th’ men down the levee right speedy.”
VIII
A TRIAL OF SKILL
“There’s wan thing about Brownsville,” said Stumpy, “that saves the place from bein’ like wan o’ them asylums f’r the feeble-moinded, where the min sews patchwork, an’ the women shmokes pipes.”
“Wot’s eatin’ you?” asked Sam, the bartender.
Sam had local pride which he held to be justified by his own prosperity, and he was apt to be gruff when any one spoke disparagingly of Brownsville. The two men had sat together on the levee, sociably silent for half an hour, when the spirit moved Stumpy to speech.
Having spoken, however, he sat as one relieved in his mind, and was in no haste for further conversation. It was therefore some minutes before he replied, but at length he said:
“Sure, it puts me in moind o’ the great famine in Ireland me father used to tell of. Ye’d go for a week or a day wid sorry a bit t’ ate of annything at all, at all, an’ thin ye’d get maybe a pratie or a crusht, that’d kape ye goin’ a bit longer.
“There do be toimes in Brownsville that’d make ye think ye was dead an’ buried. Sure, the still o’ the nights is worse nor a thundershtorm for kapin’ a man awake, an’ the days is worse.
“An’ thin, whin ye do be goin’ melancholy mad wid the monny-tony o’ loife that isn’t livin’ at all, at all, but blue-mouldin’, somethin’ or other’ll hit ye, loike a fri’ndly blackthorn at Donnybrook, an’ ye’ll sit up an’ take notice. Mostly it’s Long Mike, but times it’ll be something else.
“An’ whin it do come, ye’ll think for a time that Brownsville is wan o’ the hid cinters of all th’ excitement on the Mississippi River. Maybe it’s a bit o’ gun-play it’ll be, wid a tin-horn gambler, loike th’ toime th’ one-eyed man cashed in, or belike it’ll be somethin’ or other wid Gallagher, but annyhow it shtirs things oop. This toime Oi do be thinkin’ it’ll be Hinnissy.”