What could I do? Could I tell Ortheris anything that he did not know of the pleasures of his life? I was not a Chaplain nor a Subaltern, and Ortheris had a right to speak as he thought fit.
“Let him run, Mulvaney,” I said. “It’s the beer.”
“‘No! ’Tisn’t the beer,” said Mulvaney. “I know fwhat’s comin’. He’s tuk this way now an’ agin, an’ it’s bad—it’s bad—for I’m fond av the bhoy.”
Indeed, Mulvaney seemed needlessly anxious; but I knew that he looked after Ortheris in a fatherly way.
“Let me talk, let me talk,” said Ortheris, dreamily. “D’you stop your parrit screamin’ of a ’ot day, when the cage is a-cookin’ ’is pore little pink toes orf, Mulvaney?”
“Pink toes! D’ye mane to say you’ve pink toes undher your bullswools, ye blandanderin’,”—Mulvaney gathered himself together for a terrific denunciation—“school-misthress! Pink toes! How much Bass wid the label did that ravin’ child dhrink?”
“’Tain’t Bass,” said Ortheris, “It’s a bitterer beer nor that. It’s ’omesickness!”
“Hark to him! An’ he goin’ Home in the Sherapis in the inside av four months!”
“I don’t care. It’s all one to me. ’Ow d’you know I ain’t ’fraid o’ dyin’ ’fore I gets my discharge paipers?” He recommenced, in a sing-song voice, the Orders.
I had never seen this side of Ortheris’ character before, but evidently Mulvaney had, and attached serious importance to it. While Ortheris babbled, with his head on his arms, Mulvaney whispered to me—