“You’re only borrowed,” she warned him. “Are you a masterful man?”
“I’m meek as Moses,” he assured her. “A child could lade me.”
“Oh, then you won’t do at all!” she cried. “I thought you were masterful by your looks. My father and mother are meek, but set in their ways, and I’m tired of it. Now, a man who’d knock me about and them—”
“Ye waant me to knock thim about—yer father and mither?”
“I want them to think you would,” she corrected him. “’T would be good for them. But of course you’d not do it; you’d only be soft-spoken and blarneying.”
“I’m as gintle as a cow by nature,” he assured her; “but I’d sell me birthright to plaze ye. Now tak’ me home wid ye and prove ut.”
“’T is worth trying,” she replied. “You’ll stay to dinner? I’ve taken to you, you know.”
“I accipt both the dinner and the compliment,” he answered, “and thank ye kindly for both.”
In the porch of their small house near the wall of the cemetery of the city her father and mother sat waiting as they entered the gate.
“My friend, Mr.——” The girl hesitated.