“Wot d’yer mean by comin’ the barney over me and a-makin’ that codger of a kinstructor bullyrag me afore all the t’other chaps fur?”
“What do you mean, Reeks?” said I, in reply to this, returning his nudge with a good dig from the bony knob of my elbow in his ribs, and knocking the wind pretty well-nigh out of him. “You jumped on poor Mick Donovan’s bare foot this morning, and now you try to shove me!”
“Oh!” he exclaimed, as we emerged on the upper deck, where our division had by now already partly assembled on the starboard side, forward; “that be it, mister?”
“Yes,” said I, as I slipped into my place near Mick, “that’s it!”
After ‘divisions,’ when the other boys were rushing down below to their messes to dinner, the bugle-call for which was braying out its cheerful sounds, I stopped behind on the upper deck, as did “Ugly.”
“Sure an’ what are ye stoppin’ fur, Tom, mabouchal?” said Mick to me in surprise. “Begorrah, I can smill the mate alriddy, an’, faith, the praties, too! I can say their smilin’ faces bickonin’ to me an’ sayin’, ‘Coom an’ ate me!’”
“I’m not coming yet,” I replied, in a more serious tone than Mick evidently expected. “I’ve got some business with this chap here.”
‘Ugly’ overheard me, as I intended he should.
“Hay,” said he, “did yer speak to Oi?”
“Hay is meant for horses and asses,” I answered drily, with a grin; “and if you be one of them latter, as I think, and so does Mick here I know, why, I did refer to you!”