cepting, if you please, my dear lady, a bad shot you made at a rascal
cur, no more worthy of you than Beelzebub of Paradise. No matter! The
daughters' of Erin must share the fate of their mother Isle, that
their tears may shine in the burst of sun to follow. For personal and
patriotic motives, I would have cheered her and been like a wild ass
combed and groomed and tamed by the adorable creature. But her friend
says there 's not a whisk of a chance for me, and I must roam the
desert, kicking up, and worshipping the star I hail brightest. They know
me not, who think I can't worship. Why, what were I without my star? At
best a pickled porker.'

Sullivan Smith became aware of a ravishing melodiousness in the
soliloquy, as well as a clean resemblance in the simile. He would
certainly have proceeded to improvize impassioned verse, if he had not
seen Arthur Rhodes on the pavement. 'So, here's the boy. Query, the face
he wears.'

'How kind of you to wait,' said Arthur.

'We'll call it sympathy, for convenience,' rejoined Sullivan Smith.
'Well, and what next?'

'You know as much as I do. Thank heaven, she is recovering.'

'Is that all?'

'Why, what more?'

Arthur was jealously, inspected.

'You look open-hearted, my dear boy.' Sullivan Smith blew the sound of
a reflected ahem. 'Excuse me for cornemusing in your company,' he said.
'But seriously, there was only one thing to pardon your hurrying to the
lady's door at such a season, when the wind tells tales to the world.
She's down with a cold, you know.'

'An influenza,' said Arthur.

The simplicity of the acquiescence was vexatious to a champion desirous
of hostilities, to vindicate the lady, in addition to his anxiety to
cloak her sad plight.

'She caught it from contact with one of the inhabitants of this country.
'Tis the fate of us Irish, and we're condemned to it for the sin of
getting tired of our own. I begin to sneeze when I land at Holyhead.
Unbutton a waistcoat here, in the hope of meeting a heart, and you're
lucky in escaping a pulmonary attack of no common severity, while the
dog that infected you scampers off, to celebrate his honeymoon mayhap.
Ah, but call at her house in shoals, the world 'll soon be saying
it's worse than a coughing cold. If you came to lead her out of it in
triumph, the laugh 'd be with you, and the lady well covered. D' ye
understand?'

The allusion to the dog's honeymoon had put Arthur Rhodes on the track
of the darting crack