“Oh, I say, Dinny, come now,” said Dick, as his father sat back listening with a good-humoured smile upon his lip. “I’m not going to believe that a rhinoceros rose up on its hind legs and fought at you with its fore paws, while you stood still and aimed at it.”
“Shure, Masther Dick, dear, did you ever know me say anything that wasn’t thrue? If ye doubt me word, there’s Masther Chicory there, as brave a boy as ever stepped in—I mane out of shoe leather, and spread his little black toes about in the sand. He was there all the toime, and ye can ax him if he didn’t see it.”
“Yes,” said Chicory, “nosros try to get through big tree, and Dinny shoot um.”
“There,” said Dinny triumphantly, “what did I tell you? Why, if ye don’t believe me, there’s the baste itself lying as dead as a hammer where I shot him.”
“Then it’s only a little pig or a young rhinoceros, Dinny,” said Jack.
“Little pig!” cried Dinny. “By this an’ by that, he’s as big as the waggon there, tub an’ all. Sure a bigger and more rampaging baste niver fought wid a human man, and tried hard to ate him.”
“Why that shows what stuff you are telling us, Dinny. A rhinoceros wouldn’t eat a man; he’d trample him to death,” cried Dick, who had been a studious boy for years. “A rhinoceros is an herbivorous beast, and has a prehensile upper lip.”
“A what sort o’ baste?” said Dinny, staring.
“Herbivorous.”
“Shure an’ what’s that got to do wid it? I tell you it tried to ate me at one mouthful, in spite of his what sort o’ upper lip. Shure the poor baste couldn’t help having that the matter wid his lip. Why as soon as I set eyes on him, ‘Ah, Dinny,’ I says, ‘yer work’s cut out, me boy,’ I says, ‘for if ever there was a baste wid a stiff upper lip that’s the one.’”