Silas sat for a while smoking in silence, then he spoke.
“Where’s this you said you came from?”
“Ireland.”
“You don’t talk like a Paddy a bit.”
“Don’t I?”
“Not a bit, nor look like one.”
“Have you seen many Irish people?”
“No, mostly in pictures—comic papers, you know, like Puck.”
“I think it’s a shame,” broke out Phyl. “People are always making fun of the Irish, drawing them like monkeys with great upper lips—but it’s only ignorant people who never travel who think of them like that.”
“That’s so, I expect,” replied Silas, either unconscious of the dig at himself or undesirous of a quarrel, “and the next few dollars I have to spare I’ll go to Ireland. I’m crazy now to see it.”