Another howl from the onlookers, which left Mr Mahony quite unmoved.
“They get on well together,” said he, addressing an imaginary acquaintance in the crowd. “Whisht and hould your nize, and let’s hear what else they have to say to wan another.”
Suddenly, and before Shan Finucane could open his lips, a boy who had been looking over the rails into the park, yelled:
“Here’s the Mimber of Parlyment—here they come—Hurroo!”
“Now, then,” said the huntsman, dropping repartee and seizing the sweep’s donkey by the bridle, “sweep yourselves off, and don’t be disgracin’ the hunt wid your sut-bags and your dirty faces—away wid yiz!”
“The hunt!” yelled Mahony, with a burst of terrible laughter. “Listen to him and his ould rat-tarriers callin’ thim a hunt! Lave go of the dunkey!”
“Away wid yiz!”
“Lave go of the dunkey, or I’ll batter the head of you in wid me stick! Lave go of the dunkey!”
Suddenly seizing the long flue brush beside him, and disengaging it from the bundle of sticks with which it was bound, he let fly with the bristle end of it at Shan, and Shan, catching his heel on a stone, went over flat on his back in the road.
In a second he was up, whip in hand; in a second Mr Mahony was down, a bag half filled with soot—a terrible weapon of assault—in his fist.