“Yes, you just bet you are!” he ejaculated admiringly, as he appraised her strong, splendid figure. “You’re away taller than I am, and I shouldn’t wonder if you don’t weigh heavier, too. Riding keeps my weight down, though. I don’t suppose I go more’n a hundred and seventy-five; but that’s plenty heavy enough for a horse.”
She nodded carelessly. “Went one hundred and seventy-eight last week when I weighed myself on the grain scales—and I’m five feet ten and a half. Oh, Finnegan, that’s me!
“I had quite an adventure coming along,” she continued, with reflective gravity. “After I’d left the Goddards’ I came through a place away back on the trail there—I think it’s called ‘Fish Creek.’ I was passing by a bit of an old homestead—you couldn’t dignify it with the title of ‘ranch.’ There was a tumble-down old shack there, anyway, and as I came round the front of it—the trail bends there—I saw a funny little old man standing, or rather, leaning, in the doorway. He’d got a bottle in his hand and, oh! he was so tipsy—singing away like anything.
“Well, as soon as he caught sight of me, he raised his bottle and shouted ‘’Urroo!’ I didn’t know what he was rejoicing about, but of course I shouted ’Urroo! back. And then I suppose he intended to come over and speak to me, but the steps of his shack were broken and, oh, dear! he came such an awful tumble off his perch and smashed the bottle all to pieces.”
Ellis gave a shout of laughter. “Why, that must be old Bob Tucker,” he said. “He’s always getting ‘lit up.’ Did he scare you?”
The great, smiling girl arose and, dusting some crumbs off her lap, drew herself up to her full regal height and looked down upon him with pitying toleration.
“Huh!” she ejaculated. But words cannot express the world of scornful amusement, derision, and incredulity that she put into the exclamation. “Scare nothing! the poor little, dirty old tipsy thing. I got off Sam and picked him up, and then I saw he’d cut one of his hands on the broken bottle. It was bleeding ever so badly, and a piece of the glass was still sticking in the cut. When he saw he’d lost all his whiskey he started to swear something awful—leastways I think it was swearing.... It sounded like it, but it was in a funny language I couldn’t understand. And then he began to cry. Oh, I was so sorry for him. I helped him up the steps into the shack, and got some water and washed his cut hand—then I tied it up with my handkerchief. All the time he kept whimpering: ‘Oh, gorblimey, it ’urts! it ’urts!’ And he kept calling me ‘intombi.’ What’s that mean?”
“It’s Zulu,” said Ellis. “It means ‘young woman.’ I guess he was swearing in Kaffir or the Taal. He’s an old Cockney, but he’s lived the best part of his life in South Africa.”
“Well,” she continued, “after I’d fixed up his hand he stopped crying and commenced to shout: ‘’Urroo! ’Urroo!’ again. And then he pulled a dirty old letter out of his pocket and began to tell me it was from ‘Jack ’Arper,’ who, he explained, was a friend of his son’s, somewhere down in Eastern Ontario. ‘’E tells me my b’y ’Arry’s vrouw’s doed!—gorn to ’eving!’ he says, in a screech you could pretty nearly hear to Sabbano. And it was awful the way he chuckled and grinned over it. Just as if it was some great joke. ‘An’ Jack, ’e says as ’ow ‘Arry’s bin dronk ever since, but wevver it’s becos ’e’s sorry, or becos ’e’s glad, w’y ’e don’t know.... An’ ’e says as ’ow ’Arry wants me to come back Heast an’ live wiv ’im on th’ farm. An’ I’m a-goin’, too!’ he says. ‘I’ve sold aht this old plice—an’ me stock—to Walter ’Umphries, an’ I’m a-goin’ to trek next week. ’Urroo! ’Urroo! ’ere goes nuthin’!’”
Ellis, at this point, was convulsed with mirth; for her exact mimicry of old Tucker’s Cockney speech was startlingly natural and funny in the extreme.