“Hush! the ladies will hear you,” I said.
“I ax your Honour’s pardon; perhaps I am making too bold, but it’s nateral for a man that has seed so much of the world as I have to talk a bit, especially as my tongue is absent on furlough more nor half the year, and then the old ‘ooman’s goes on duty, and never fear, Sir, her’n don’t sleep at its post. She has seen too much sarvice for that. It don’t indeed. It hails every one that passes the sentry-box, and makes ’em advance and give the countersign. A man that has seed so much, Sir, in course has a good deal to talk about. Now, Sir, I don’t want to undervaly the orns at no rate, but Lord bless you, Sir, I have seen the orns of a wild sheep, when I was in the Medeteranion, so large, I could hardly lift them with one hand. They say young foxes sleep in them sometimes. Oh, Sir, if they would only get a few of them sheep, and let them loose here, there would be some fun in unting of them. They are covered over with air in summer, and they are so wild you can’t take them no other way than by shooting of them. Then, Sir, there is the orns of—”
“But how is the moose half English?” sais I.
“Why, Sir, I heard our colour-sergeant M’Clure say so when we was in Halifax. He was a great reader and a great arguer, Sir, as most Scotchmen are. I used to say to him, ‘M’Clure, it’s a wonder you can fight as well as you do, for in England fellows who dispute all the time commonly take it all out in words.’
“One day, Sir, a man passed the north barrack gate, tumping (as he said, which means in English, Sir, hauling) an immense bull moose on a sled, though why he didn’t say so, I don’t know, unless he wanted to show he knew what M’Clure calls the botanical word for it. It was the largest hanimal I ever saw here.”
“Says Mac to him, ‘What do you call that creature?’
“‘Moose,’ said he.
“‘Do you pretend to tell me,’ said Mac, ‘that that henormous hanimal, with orns like a deer, is a moose?’
“‘I don’t pretend at all,’ said he; ‘I think I hought to know one when I see it, for I have killed the matter of a undred of them in my day.’
“‘It’s a daumed lee,’ said the sergeant. ‘It’s no such thing; I wouldn’t believe it if you was to swear to it.’