"It's only her play," said Moriarty, "but don't you ever open the door of the box be yourself, for, begad, if she once got a hoult of you, it's into the box she'll have you, over the dure top, and after that, begorra, it id be all over but the funeral. Here's the other horse."
He opened Garryowen's box.
Garryowen projected his lovely head and expanded his nostrils at the stranger. Miss Grimshaw looked from the horse to the bailiff, and from the bailiff to the horse, contrasting the two animals in her mind.
"Are these carriage horses?" asked Mr. Piper, as Miss Grimshaw retired to the house, leaving him in charge of Moriarty.
"Carriage what?"
"Horses."
"Sure, where were you born that you never saw a racehorse?"
"If you arsk me where I was born, I was born in Peckham," said Mr. Piper, "and if you arsk me if I have ever seen a racehorse, I am proud to say I have not, nor a race-meeting; and if you arsk me what I'd do with jockeys and publicans and all those who corrupt the people and take honest men's wages out of their pocket—I say, if you arsk me what I'd do with them, I'd answer you that I'd put them in a sack and the sack in the Thames."
"Faith," said Moriarty, contemplating his vis-a-vis, "if I hadn't fallen into conversation wid you I'd never have guessed there was so much 'arsk' about you; but, faith, you're right. It's the whisky and the horses that plays the divil and all wid men. Now, I'd lay, from your face, you'd never been dhrunk in your life."
"I've never even tasted alcohol," said Piper. "Neither alcohol nor tobacco has ever sullied my mouth, nor shall it ever sully a child of mine."