“Oh, yes! I don’t believe I’ve been there yet.”
“Well, it isn’t much to look at,” laughed Johnny. “We lived there until about three years ago. We weren’t as poor as most of them, but there were six of us in five rooms, Grant. Then dad made his pile and we bought this place.” Johnny looked about him not altogether approvingly and shook his head. “It’s fine enough, all right, but, say, fellows, it’s awfully—what’s the word I seen—saw the other day? Stodgy, that’s it! I guess it’s going to take us another three years to get used to it.”
“He misses having the pig in the parlor,” observed Slim gravely to Leonard. The latter looked toward Johnny McGrath anxiously, but Johnny only grinned.
“’Twas never that bad with us,” he replied, “but I mind the day the Cleary’s nanny-goat walked in the kitchen and ate up half of dad’s nightshirt, and mother near killed him with a flat-iron!”
“Why did she want to kill your father with a flat-iron?” asked Slim mildly.
“The goat, I said.”
“You did not, Johnny. You told us it was a nanny-goat and said your mother nearly killed ‘him.’ If that doesn’t mean your father—”
“Well, anyway, I had to lick Terry Cleary before there was peace between us again,” laughed Johnny. Then his face sobered. “Sure, up here on the Hill,” he added, “you couldn’t find a scrap if you was dying!”
The others had to laugh, Slim ejaculating between guffaws: “Johnny, you’ll be the death of me yet!” Johnny’s blue eyes were twinkling again and his broad Irish mouth smiling.