And from the way the light from above fell on it as he held it, the rays streamed out from the jewelled cross some like the flashin’ rays from a sword.
He had spoke to me before about the wretchedness and beggary of the people, and expressed wonder that one or two men should own hundreds of thousands of acres and keep it for idle pleasure grounds, while all round were men who couldn’t, no matter how sober and industrious they might be, buy enough land to build a shed on.
He had looked dreamy and strange while he talked it over, but, as his usual way wuz, he didn’t blame nothin’ nor nobody—that wuz the difference between me and him.
He would seem to ask about and find out about things, and then jest write ’em down in that book of hisen. His face a-lookin’ calm a most all the time, but dretful earnest and deep and sorrowful, a good part of the time. His writin’ wuzn’t nothin’ hard, I don’t believe, but comparin’ the doin’s here with the things in his own land, I spoze.
I had noticed that he had wrote down quite a good deal after he had hearn this conversation on Home Rule, and how for hundreds of years a brave people had tried to git the rule of their own land. Not always makin’ wise efforts, I spoze, but brave ones every time, and how the grand old man in England had stood up for ’em aginst his own folks.
I see Al Faizi had writ down quite a considerable, a-praisin’ Gladstone, for all I know. He never told what he writ down or drawed our attention to it, no more than the sun duz as it photographs the pictures of the bendin’ trees and the flowers on the earth beneath. Jest duz it, and that’s all.
The sun and Al Faizi did. That’s where I differed some—I talked more. Wimmen do have to talk once in a while—they’re made so, I guess, onbeknown to ’em. And I said quite a good deal aloud and found considerable fault, though I meant not to be too hard on either side.
There’s always two sides to every story. Ireland hain’t always right, I don’t spoze, no more’n England. When two men git to fightin’ back and forth, there must be some fault on both sides before they git through, anyway, sech as swearin’, kickin’, etc., etc., etc.
I hain’t got nothin’ agin Queen Victoria, and she knows I hain’t. The Widder Albert is a good woman and a good calculator, and has brung up her children well, and has laid up for ’em.
And if ever any woman wuz a mourner for a pardner, she’s been and is now.