“What are you two laughing at, my sister?”
“Why, here is Mr. Burns making love to me at breakfast, and before night he will be abusing me for not pouring enough rum in his punch!”
“That’s his caractur, Madame Nathalie; for I, Tom Stewart, am the only person he ever loved, and he sometimes offers to shoot me for giving him unco’ good advice.”
“Howld yer tongue, ye divil ye! and you too, Stingo, or the pair of ye shall niver taste another sip of the old claret. Ye’ve ruined me cause entirely! But I’ll lave ye me property, madame, when I’m gone.”
“He’s been talking of going, Nathalie,” said Piron, “for the last twenty years, and has left his estate to at least thirty women, to my certain knowledge; but he hasn’t got off yet, and––”
“Tom Stewart, ye miserable limb of the law! make out me will this very night.”
Jacob Blunt unclosed his salt-junk mouth, and roared out in a peal of laughter that would have shivered his old brig’s spanker, and caused, perhaps, Martha Blunt, sposa, to have spanked him, Jacob, had she heard and seen that mariner wagging his old bronzed face at the lovely woman facing him.
Mr. Tiny Mouse, who could not touch bottom on his high chair, with his little heels dangling about, forgetful of discipline, fairly kicked the broad pennant on the shins of his white ducks, screaming joyously; the three women made the piazza vibrate with their musical trills; Stingo and Stewart choked; Cleveland and Darcantel were amused; and old black Banou looked at his master, and grinned till his double range of teeth seemed like a white wave breaking at the cove. And then Paddy Burns took up the chorus, and after one or two Galway yells his friends took him up, thumped him smartly on the back, and stood him up against one of the posts of the piazza to have his laugh out. When he did, however, recover the power of speech, he wiped his eyes and looked around till they rested on Madame Nathalie, when, with his white napkin held up like a shield beside his rubicund visage, he spluttered,
“By me sowl, Tom Stewart, I mane what I say; and Paddy Burns’s word is his bond!”