"Oh, a job is ut?" he inquired without enthusiasm, from his seat on a pile of ties beside the track.
"Listen, here, Pat," said Sammy Durgan brightly. "Listen to——"
"Yez have yer nerve wid yez!" observed the section boss caustically. "Yez put me in moind av a felley I had workin' fer me wance, for yez are the dead spit av him, Sammy Durgan, that blew the roof off av the construction shanty, an'——"
"That was two years ago, Donovan," interposed Sammy Durgan hurriedly, "and you've no blasting powder on this job, and it was no fault of mine. I would have explained it at the time, but you were a bit hot under the collar, Pat, and you would not listen. I was but testing the detonator box, and 'twas yourself told me the connections were not made."
"Did I?"—the section boss was watching his chattering gang of foreigners with gradually narrowing eyes.
"You did," asserted Sammy Durgan earnestly, "and——"
Sammy Durgan stopped. Donovan had leaped from his seat, and was gesticulating fiercely at his gold-earringed, greasy-haired laboring crew.
"Yez are apes!" he yelled, dancing frantically up and down. "Yez are oorang-ootangs! An' yez talk like a cageful av monkeys! Yez look loike men, but yez are not! Yez are annything that has no brains! Have I not told yez till me throat's cracked doin' ut thot yez are not rayquired to lift the whole dombed right av way to put in a single measly tie? Is ut a hump loike a camel's back yez are try in' to make in the rail? Here! Dig—here!"—the little section boss, with wrathful precision, indicated the exact spot with the toe of his boot.
He returned to his seat, and regarded Sammy Durgan helplessly.
"'Tis a new lot," said he sadly, "an' the worst, bar none, that iver I had."