"Did I bring enough?" enquired Conrad.
"They'll do."
"So'll ye, me lad," said Murphy behind his hand to Tressa. "Faith, but ye've a way wid ye. Here I was hoping for a bang-up spree, wid me houlding the watch till me blood got riled; and all that rat of a kid does is to dr-rop a few hundred husky bohunks into his pocket and lug 'em up the bank to overtime on a foine night like this. It's dishear-rtening. A chap can't get up a recent foight out here. I'm going back to civilisation where they still bang each other about a bit in a friendly way, thank God! Where'd yeer father pick him up, Tressa?"
"He didn't 'pick him up'," replied Tressa indignantly.
The merry eyes of the engineer came round to her in a slow circle.
"I'm always making mistakes like that. I never can tell when a couple's married—not unless he's showing the mar-rks of it about the pate, or flir-rting wid another gir-rl. What I meant to ask was how did yeer benevolent paterfamilias contrive to induce him to direct his seductive manners to the uncongenial atmosphere o' construction." He peered more closely into the laughing eyes of the girl. "And good taste he has, too, bad cess to him! If I was younger now— These whiskers hide me age; they've always been me fatal lure. The girls take to thim like ants to sugar. Me first wife took to thim so liberally I had to cut thim off in self-protection. I used to wear thim par-rted in the middle. Ah, a gay dog was I. That was before I saw 'Lord Dundreary.' Sure I changed thim so quick then the gir-rls didn't know they weren't flirting wid the same fellow. Next to being taken for an Englishman, an Irishman would prefer old Nick himself. So I let thim grow solid, the luxuriant and becoming gr-rowth ye're admiring this very minute. . . . Look at that now!"
He indicated the work of unloading. Each car was being emptied at the edge of the trestle on the other side of the grade, where a long shoot had been scooped from the bank and walled off to direct the falling rocks from the framework of the trestle.
"Ye'd think some o' thim beggars liked wor-rk. Koppy, there, him o' the leering eye and forked tongue—that's Indian, ye know—he thinks he's showing off."
Koppowski was standing on a car, legs far apart, heaving over great rocks with his bare hands. Two bohunks, unsuccessfully tussling with a huge piece, he unceremoniously pushed aside, to grip it with his callous hands. Slowly it tilted, balanced a moment, and bounded away to the valley with great thuds.
"Ye mayn't be aware of it, gir-rl, but ye're expected to clap. Koppy's showing off. I know the symptoms—but I grew whiskers then." He combed long, toil-stained fingers through the beard.