“So you’ve beefed, eh? Yer goin’ to try that racket, are youse? Well you’ve made a scratch, see? Ye forgot to call yer play. I don’t go to church; he can’t jump me because I won’t stand for it.”
“Then he’ll go to your father,” said she, “and I will, too. He’ll make ye do what ye said ye would; he can’t help it!”
“I’ll jump the town,” said he, doggedly. “There ain’t no use chewin’ it up with the old man; he ain’t got no pull with me! I’d flag him as quick as I would youse.”
Then she began to reproach him. He opened an extensive vocabulary of abuse, and drenched her with epithets; she grew angry and responded in kind; for a time their words reeked with foulness. Suddenly he drew back his arm and struck her; she fell backward, the blood spirting from her nostrils and mouth. Kelly did not give her a second glance, but strode away, cursing under his breath.
People have an awkward habit of dying at all hours of the day and night, and an undertaker is never care free for a moment. Roddy Ferguson was revolving this fact with gloomy disapproval as he bowled stableward in O’Connor’s black wagon, his mud spattered horse picking its way along the broken street.
“Old Brannagan,” muttered Roddy, “has been dyin’ once a month reg’lar for the last three years; and now, just because it’s the night of the ball, he cashes in for real, an’ I have to hustle to fix him up.”
His horse shied, and the youth tightened the reins and chirruped soothingly.
“Gartenheim,” he mused, “must be gittin’ paid by the day for this sewer; he’s been long enough at it to sew tassels on every brick he puts in. Go on there, ye big Indian, what’s the matter with youse, anyhow?”
He jumped out to see what frightened the horse, and at once caught sight of the prostrate figure at the foot of the spile-driver; the pale, wavering rays of a gas lamp gave him a glimpse of the blood-smeared face.
“It’s a woman,” he gasped, “she must be hurted!”