Ho! don’t you ’eed what a girl says,
An’ don’t you go for the beer:
But I was an ass when I was at grass,
An’ that is why I’m ’ere,
“Ay, listen to our little man now, singin’ an’ shoutin’ as tho’ trouble had niver touched him. D’ you remember when he went mad with the homesickness?” said Mulvaney, recalling a never-to-be-forgotten season when Ortheris waded through the deep waters of affliction and behaved abominably. “But he’s talkin’ bitter truth, though. Eyah!
“My very worst frind from beginnin’ to ind By the blood av a mouse was mesilf!”
* * * * *
When I woke I saw Mulvaney, the night-dew gemming his moustache, leaning on his rifle at picket, lonely as Prometheus on his rock, with I know not what vultures tearing his liver.
THE STORY OF MUHAMMAD DIN
Who is the happy man? He that sees in his own house at home, little children crowned with dust, leaping and falling and crying.
—Munichandra, translated by Professor Peterson.
The polo-ball was an old one, scarred, chipped, and dinted. It stood on the mantelpiece among the pipe-stems which Imam Din, khitmatgar, was cleaning for me.
“Does the Heaven-born want this ball?” said Imam Din, deferentially.