“It’s mesilf that don’t see how that can be, though I can beat any gentleman that walks on two legs in going the wrong way. The first time I started to go upstairs, I opened the cellar dure and bumped all the way to the bottom, and when I was faaling me way fur the cellar dure, I tumbled out the parlor windy. Then mither sent me on an errand to Widow Mulligan’s and instead of stepping onto the porch, I put my fut over the well curb and didn’t find out the difference till I hit the bottom of the well. So you see, Hoke, that that wakeness is my strongest p’int.”
“Where do you think the lake lies?”
“I’m not as far gone as that; head that way and you’ll walk straight onto the same.” Mike pointed his shillaleh to the left, whereupon his friend laughed.
“Just what I expected; you’re away off.”
“What do ye make it,—since you saam to think you can make no mistake?”
“I never lose my bearings,—you can depend on me. That direction leads to the lake.”
The joke of it was that Hoke instead of deviating more or less from the course pointed out by Mike, chose one that was the opposite.
“Are ye in airnest?” asked Mike.
“Never more so.”
“I’m glad to larn that, for I don’t like such jokes, as Jim O’Hara said whin the policeman broke his club over his head. Ye are wrong.”