“Adventure, is it?” said Patsy, pushing his empty glass away from him. “What happened me last night would be makin’ a adventure seem like grass growin’ in a cimitery!”
From the other side of the table, in their own particular corner of the back room at Devinsky’s Place on the Upper East Side, Tim regarded his friend with characteristic stolidity and replied with a grunt of interrogatory interest. Patsy seldom needed urging in the matter of talking about himself.
“It all come of Mike O’Hara’s owin’ me three dollars,” he continued. “Sure, the good heart of me keeps me brains busy rescuin’ me from trouble. Mike is after keepin’ a boat-house over on the North River near Spuytendivil, and seein’ no other way I wint up to see him early last evenin’ and took wan of his boats out for five hours, though it’s me hates floatin’ about in a bunch of boards and workin’ to do it.
“Twas me intention to work up the river with the tide and thin cheat O’Hara by gittin’ out and settin’ on the shore. Which I done, tyin’ me boat to wan of thim skinny little private docks over on the Jersey shore beyant Fort Lee. And thin, Tim, it come on me to climb clear up thim Palisades, which was amazin’ unnatural and the first of the queer things that happened me the night.
“It was hard climbin’ by a path what was mostly growed up with vines, and whin I come to the top they wasn’t anny too much daylight left to me, and the place was lonely as a Dimmycrat. They was lights over across the river in New York—och, but thim lights was far off!—but Jersey was just wan hunk of nuthin’, with some ghosty trees in the front of it. Excipt for a tug or a ferry whistlin’ now and thin, they was niver a sound but the hummin’ of ivry wan of all the mosquities that iver was, barrin’ thim as was tryin’ was they a chanct to kiss each other by borin’ through me from both sides at wanct.
“It was no place for usin’ up boat-rint, but me shoes was full of gravel and, seein’ the ruins of a house a bit off, I wint over to it to set down and take thim off comfortable. It’s the fine large house it must ’a’ been wanct, but they’d been a fire in it, and ’twas only the walls of it was standin’, with wan big second-story room stickin’ up big and darkish in a corner of it. Raymimber that wan second-story room in your mind. It was all a bit creepy-like, and I wint at me shoes in a hurry.
“I had the both of thim off and shakin’ thim, rubbin’ me sock-feet together to keep some of thim mosquities away, whin all to wanct I heard something walkin’. Just as I was, I turned mesilf to stone, with me feet up off the ground and a empty shoe held out in the air afore me in each hand, balancin’ mesilf wonderful.
“The steps come nearer. ‘They ain’t anny ghost makes that much noise,’ I says, niver losin’ me nerve or movin’ a inch annywheres. ‘Though ye can’t niver tell about ghosts.’ And just thin a little man come strollin’ round the corner of a wall and stood lookin’ at me. It wasn’t so dark yet but what I could be makin’ out what little they was of him, and if iver wan of thim dudes in the newspaper funny-pictures come to life, here he was, only thim funny-pictures must ’a’ been drawed by ammyteurs. I misdoubted was he real, but if he was, they was money on him, and if they was money on him, it would come off of him easy-like, and I could be namin’ the man would spend it. Thin I raymimbered I was still holdin’ up me shoes and me feet, like I was settin’ on the point of a church-steeple, for his mouth was hangin’ open like I was the first wan he iver seen, and belike I was.
“‘Pardon me,’ he says, ‘but why do ye do that?’ says he, singin’ it off like a Englishman.