“That’s just what I’m doing, sor,” said Dinny, with a soft smile. “It’s Nature, sor. She was bad enough, and thin you helped her. Oh, there’s no foighting agen it! It used to be so in Oireland. She says to the little birds in the spring—choose your partners, darlin’s, she says, and they chose ’em; and she said the same to human man, and he chooses his.”
“Oh, Dinny, if you hadn’t quite such a long tongue!” cried Humphrey.
“Faix, it’s a regular sarpint, sor, for length, and just as desaving; but as I was saying, what Nature says in owld Oireland in the spring she says out here in this baste of a counthry where there’s nayther spring, summer, autumn, nor winther—nothing but a sort of moshposh of sunshine and howling thunderstorms.”
“And—”
“Yis, sor, that’s I’m a fallen man.”
“And will you really help me to escape!”
“Whisht, sor! What are ye thinking about? Spaking aloud in a counthry where the parrots can talk like Christians and the threes is full of ugly little chaps, who sit and watch ye and say nothing, but howld toight wid their tails, and thin go and whishper their saycrets to one another, and look as knowing as Barny Higgins’s pig.”
“Dinny, will you speak sensibly?”
“Sinsibly! Why, what d’ye call this? Ar’n’t I tellin’ ye that it’s been too much for me wid Black Mazzard shut up in his cage and the purty widow free to do as she plases; and sure and she plases me, sor, and I’m a fallen man.”
“You’ll help me?”