Page:Hopkinson Smith--Tom Grogan.djvu/37

 Lathers about doin' yer wurruk,” began McGaw, resting one foot on a pile of barrow-planks, his elbow on his knee. “I does all the haulin' to the foort. Surgint Duffy knows me. I wuz along here las' week, an' see ye wuz put back fer stone. If I'd had the job, I'd had her unloaded two days befoore.”

“You're dead right, Dan,” said Lathers, with an expression of disgust. “This woman business ain't no good, nohow. She ought to be over her tubs.”

“She does her work, though,” Babcock said, beginning to see the drift of things.

“Oh, I don't be sayin' she don't. She's a dacint woman, anough; but thim b'ys as is a-runnin' her carts is raisin' h—ll all the toime.”

“And then look at the teams,” chimed in Lathers, with a jerk of his thumb toward the dock—“a lot of staggering horse-car wrecks you couldn't sell to a glue-factory. That big gray she had a-hoistin' is blind of an eye and sprung so forrard he can't hardly stand.”

At this moment the refrain of a song from somewhere near the board fence came wafting through the air,—