nd must be rimonsthrated wid for darin'
to assault and batther a Dhraghoon--an' him dhrunk, poor bhoy. Say the
wurrud, Matty. We'll lay for the spalpeen, the whole of E Troop, at
the _Ring o' Bells_, an' whin he shwaggers in like he was a Dhraghoon
an' a sodger, ye'll up an' say _'Threes about'_ an' act accordin'
subsequint, an' learn the baste not to desthroy an' insult his
betthers of the Ould Second. Thread on the tail of his coat,
Matty...."

"If I had anything to do with it at all I'd tread on Flannigan's coat,
and you can tell him so, for disgracing the Corps.... Take off your
jacket and help with my boots, Shocky. I'm for Guard."

"Oi'd clane the boots of no man that ud demane himself to ax it," was
the haughty reply of the disappointed warrior. "Not for less than a
quart at laste," he amended.

"A quart it is," answered Dam, and O'Shaughnessy speedily divested
himself of his stable-jacket, incidentally revealing the fact that he
had pawned his shirt.

"You have got your teeth ready, then?" observed Dam, noting the
underlying bareness--and thereby alluded to O'Shaughnessy's habit of
pawning his false teeth after medical inspection and redeeming them in
time for the next, at the cost of his underclothing--itself redeemed
in turn by means of the teeth. Having been compelled to provide
himself with a "plate" he invariably removed the detested contrivance
and placed it beside him when sitting down to meals (on those rare
occasions when he and not his "uncle" was the arbiter of its
destinies)....

A young and important Lance-Corporal, a shocking tyrant and bully,
strode into the room, his sword clanking. O'Shaughnessy arose and
respectfully drew him aside, offering him a "gasper". They were joined
by a lean hawk-faced individual answering to the name of Fish, who
said he had been in the American navy until buried alive at sea for
smiling within sight of the quarter-deck.

"Yep," he was heard to say to some statement of O'Shaughnessy's.
"We'll hatch a five-bunch frame-up to put the eternal kibosh on the
tuberous spotty--souled skunklet. Some. We'll make him wise to whether
a tippy, chew-the-mop, bandy-legged, moke-monkey can come
square-pushing, and with his legs out, down _this_ side-walk, before
we ante out. Some."

"Ah, Yus," agreed the Lance-Corporal. "Damned if I wouldn't chawnce me
arm[19] and go fer 'im meself before we leave--on'y I'm expectin'
furver permotion afore long. But fer that I'd take it up