“Man, I know it,” replied Phineas.
“Ghosts be blowed!” cried Mo Shendish. “She’s a bit of orl right, she is. What I call class. Doesn’t chuck ’erself at yer ’ead, like some of ’em, and, on the other ’and, has none of yer blooming stand-orfishness. See what I mean?” He clutched them each by an arm—he was between them. “Look ’ere. How do you think I could pick up this blinking lingo—quick?”
“Make violent love to Toinette and ask her to teach you. There’s nothing like it,” said Doggie.
“Who’s Toinette?”
“The nice old lady in the kitchen.”
Mo flung his arm away. “Oh, go and boil yourself!” said he.
But the making of love to the old woman in the kitchen led to possibilities of which Mo Shendish never dreamed. They never dawned on Doggie until he found himself at it that evening.
It was dusk. The men were lounging and smoking about the courtyard. Doggie, who had long since exchanged poor Taffy Jones’s imperfect penny whistle for a scientific musical instrument ordered from Bond Street, was playing, with his sensitive skill, the airs they loved. He had just finished “Annie Laurie”—“Man,” Phineas used to declare, “when Doggie Trevor plays ‘Annie Laurie,’ he has the power to take your heart by the strings and drag it out through your eyes”—he had just come to the end of this popular and gizzard-piercing tune and received his meed of applause, when Toinette came out of the kitchen, two great zinc crocks in her hands, and crossed to the pump in the corner of the yard. Three or four would-be pumpers, among them Doggie, went to her aid.
“All right, mother, we’ll see to it,” said one of them.