“Do you live here?”
“Live, is it? Faith, nobody lives nowhere in this haythenish land.”
As no reply followed this assertion, Dennis strengthened it by adding:
“It’s livin’ I’ve not done since I left Connemara, an’ that’s the truth I’m tellin’ ye. This station of ‘Leopard’ has give up. The folks what run it has moved on a peg, to the station beyant. ’Tis with them I stays when I stays anywhere. But it’s mostly workin’ the track all alone I am, barrin’ Mike Grady and a hansel o’ ‘Greasers’, to help. It’s lonesome as sin, so it is. Moreover—”
Of his own accord, there seemed no prospect of Dennis’s pausing, so Carlota interrupted:
“The Captain said we were to wait at the station till we were called for by our father. Is this all the place there is?”
“Stay here, is it? All by your lone?”
“I—don’t—know. Is it the railroad? Are those shiny things outside the rails? Do the trains come to-night?”
“Sure, yourself is a girrul, now ain’t ye? By the questions ye put all to once. Let’s take ’em in turn an’ find out.”
