CHAPTER XLI
When Bridget dragged Andy back and insisted on his going to bed—
No—I will not be too good natured and tell my story in that way; besides, it would be a very difficult matter to tell it; and why should an author, merely to oblige people, get himself involved in a labyrinth of difficulties, and rack his unfortunate brain to pick and choose words properly to tell his story, yet at the same time to lead his readers through the mazes of this very ticklish adventure, without a single thorn scratching their delicate feelings, or as much as making the smallest rent in the white muslin robe of propriety? So, not to run unnecessary risks, the story must go on another way.
When Shan More and the rest of the “big blackguards” began to wake, the morning after the abduction, and gave a turn or two under their heather coverlid, and rubbed their eyes as the sun peeped through the “curtains of the east”—for these were the only bed-curtains Shan More and his companions ever had—they stretched themselves and yawned, and felt very thirsty, for they had all been blind drunk the night before, be it remembered; and Shan More, to use his own expressive and poetic imagery, swore that his tongue was “as rough as a rat's back,” while his companions went no further than saying theirs were as “dry as a lime-burner's wig.” We should not be so particular in those minute details but for that desire of truth which has guided us all through this veracious history and as in this scene, in particular, we feel ourselves sure to be held seriously responsible for every word, we are determined to be accurate to a nicety, and set down every syllable with stenographic strictness.
“Where's the girl?” cried Shan, not yet sober.
“She's asleep with your sisther,” was the answer.
“Down-stairs?” inquired Shan.
“Yes,” said the other, who now knew that Big Jack was more drunk than he at first thought him, by his using the words stairs; for Jack when he was drunk was very grand, and called down the ladder “down-stairs.”
“Get me a drink o' wather,” said Jack, “for I'm thundherin' thirsty, and can't deludher that girl with soft words till I wet my mouth.”