In a few minutes she looked up again, and spread the ragged blanket more carefully over the shoulders of the sick man, and Larry, feeling that he was at that time in the questionable position of an eavesdropper, left his place of concealment, and stood before the tent.
The sick man saw him instantly, and, raising himself slightly, exclaimed, “Who goes there? Sure I can’t git lave to die in pace!”
The familiar tones of a countryman’s voice fell pleasantly on Larry’s ear as he sprang into the tent, and, seizing the sick man’s hand, cried, “A blissin’ on the mouth that said that same. O Pat, darlint! I’m glad to mate with ye. What’s the matter with ye? Tell me now, an’ don’t be lookin’ as if ye’d seen a ghost.”
“Kape back,” said the girl, pushing Larry aside, with a half-pleased, half-angry expression. “Don’t ye see that ye’ve a’most made him faint? He’s too wake intirely to be—”
“Ah! then, cushla, forgive me; I wint and forgot meself. Blissin’s on yer pale face! sure yer Irish too.”
Before the girl could reply to this speech, which was uttered in a tone of the deepest sympathy, the sick man recovered sufficiently to say—
“Sit down, friend. How comed ye to larn me name? I guess I never saw ye before.”
“Sure, didn’t I hear yer wife say it as I come for’ard to the tint,” answered Larry, somewhat staggered at the un-Irish word “guess.”
“He is my brother,” remarked the girl.
“Troth, ye’ve got a dash o’ the Yankee brogue,” said Larry, with a puzzled look; “did ye not come from the owld country?”