"This here posture ain't so agreeable as dancing," hoarsely grumbled Caudel, "could almost wish myself a dwarf. That there word beginning with a Sally—"
"Not so loud, man; not so loud."
"It's oncommon queer," he persisted, "to feel one's self in a country where one's language ain't spoke. The werry soil don't seem natural. As to the language itself, burst me if I can understand how a man masters it. I was once trying to teach an Irish sailor how to dance a quadrille. 'Now, Murphy,' says I to him, 'you onderstand you're my wiz-a-wee?' 'What's dat you call me?' he cried out. 'You're anoder and a damn scoundrel besoides!' Half the words in this here tongue sound like cussing of a man. And to think of a dining-room being called a Sally—"
The convent clock struck one.
"Now," said I, "stand by."
I held up the lamp, and so turned the darkened part as to produce two flashes. A moment after a tiny flame showed and vanished above the balcony.
"My brave darling!" I exclaimed. "Have you the ladder in your hand?"
"Ay, sir."
"Mind these confounded hooks don't chink."
We stepped across the sward and stood under the balcony.