''Tis asier said than done,' remarked Andy, looking for a niche between the logs to put his foot in. 'I hope this isn't the way we'll always have to be clamberin' into our house; but sorra other way do I see, barrin' the hole's to be a passage ondherground.'
'You goose! the hole is to be a cellar, wherein to keep potatoes and pork,' said his master, overhearing the tale of his soliloquy. Andy departed to his cookery enlightened.
Before the pan had done frizzling, whole rows of the ready-made troughs were laid along the roof, sloping from the upper wall plate to the back; and Mr. Bunting had even begun to place the covering troughs with either edge of the hollow curving into the centre of that underneath. Robert and Arthur were chinking the walls by driving pieces of wood into every crevice between the logs: moss and clay for a further stuffing must be afterwards found.
If the Yankee were quick at work, he fulfilled the other sequent of the adage likewise. His dinner was almost a sleight-of-hand performance. Arthur could hardly eat his own for concealed amusement at the gulf-like capacity of his mouth, and the astonishing rapidity with which the eatables vanished.
'While you'd be sayin' "thrapstick," he tucked in a quarter of a stone of praties and a couple of pound of rashers,' said Andy afterwards. 'Before the gintlemen was half done, he was picking his long yellow teeth wid a pin, an' discoorsin' 'em as impident as if he was a gintleman himself, the spalpeen!'
All unwitting of the storm gathering in the person of the cook, Mr. Bunting did indulge in some free and easy reflections upon Britishers in general, and the present company in particular; also of the same cook's attendance during their meal.
'Now I guess we free-born Americans don't be above having our helps to eat with us; we ain't poor and proud, as that comes to. But I'll see ye brought down to it, or my name's not Zack Bunting. It tickles me to see aristocrats like ye at work—rael hard work, to take the consait out of ye; and if I was this feller,' glancing at Andy, 'I'd make tracks if ye didn't give me my rights, smart enough.'
The glow in the Irish servant's eyes was not to be mistaken.
'I guess I've riled you a bit,' added the Yankee wonderingly.
'An' what's my rights, sir, if yer honour would be plasin' to tell me?' asked Andy, with mock obsequiousness; 'for I donno of a single one this minit, barrin' to do what my master bids me.'