Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/245

Rh continued with apparent rancor. It was Tim who enlightened her on that point. It was Tim, too, who got talking of the English, later in the evening, and so far forgot his platform hatred of the oppressor that he spoke of the Irish regiments and the British empire as if the glory of the latter had been the proud work of the former.

She was puzzled.

"They 're queer some ways," she was to tell her shopmate, next day. "You 'd think they were fightin' sometimes when they ain't. I guess they bark worse 'n they bite. You 'd like Barney, Madge. He 's just your style. He 's an awful jollier—an' he teases Tim an' says things about him—but he thinks Tim 's the whole tip, just the same, when you know him. An' say! Don't Tim know how to be sweet when he wants to!" She laughed. "Never mind. I ain't goin' to tell."

If she could have told any more, it might have been to put a tongue to that racial mystery, the charm and contradiction, the appeal and the repulsion, of the kind of Irish whom she had called the "hot-air Harps." Perhaps she was wise to refrain from the attempt.