“If my faat are risting on the ground!” repeated Terry: “and if I were doing the same, I would be as tall as a maating-house wid the staaple thrown in.”
“Thin would ye loike to have us join ye?” persisted the wife.
“Arrah, Delia, now are ye gone clean crazy, that ye talks in that style? Stay where ye be, and I would be thankful if I could get back to ye, which the same I can’t do.”
The wife had been so flustered that her questions were a little mixed, but by the time she was fairly seated on the roof, with one arm encircling Maggie, who clung, frightened and crying, to her, she began to realize her situation.
“Terry,” she called again, “are ye not comfortable?”
“Wal, yis,” replied the fellow, whose waggery must show itself, now that he believed the entire family were safe from the flood, “I faals as comfortable, thank ye, as if I was standing on me head on the top of a barber’s pole. How is it wid yerself, me jewel?”
“I’m thankful for the blissing of our lives; but why don’t ye climb into the traa and take a seat?”
“I will do so in a few minutes.”
There was good ground for this promise. Although Terry had been sustaining himself only a brief while, he felt the water rising so rapidly that the crown of his head, which was several inches below the supporting limb, quickly touched it, and as he shifted his position slightly it ascended still farther. While sustaining his child he could not lift both over the branch, but, with the help of the current, would soon be able to do so.
Requesting his wife to hold her peace for the moment, he seized the opportunity the instant it presented itself, and with comparatively little outlay of strength, placed himself astride the branch. This was all well enough, provided the flood did not keep on ascending, but it was doing that very thing, and his perch must speedily become untenable.