Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/103

 "Not so you'd notice it. The noble Nick didn't waste any soft-soap. 'Hands up, Wall-eyed Mike; the jig is up.' That's Nick's way. This Cellini chap didn't waste any guff that I noticed. When he saw a head he hit it." She laughed. So far she had not found this amazing Irishman backward in the matter of retorts. He usually gave as good as he got. She liked him. For all his bewildering lingo, he possessed that rare attribute called personality. He was so breezy, so strong and active, that those about seemed to imbue some of the animal spirits which radiated from him. When she was with him she experienced a tingle and a zest in life. His voice and eyes were filled with electric fluids. It was too bad that he hadn't had the right chance in life. When she compared him with Camden, it struck her forcibly that the comparison was in the Irishman's favor. Camden soothed her, but his very soothing qualities seemed to arouse a subconscious irritation in her.

By constant reprimand she had succeeded in drawing William partially out of the morass of slang into which habit and association had thrown him. At a word from her he would have stopped smoking, worn his dress-suit at breakfast, forsworn his meat. But invariably, once he became excited or deeply in earnest, the gates would burst open. Never by any hap were his transgressions vulgar. She was well enough informed to know that his phrases had been conned from the sporting pages of the newspapers—baseball, the prize-ring, and