Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/84

 "Say, supposing you start in and tell me where I get off on the straight talk?"

"You mean correct you? That's a pretty large order. Suppose you make it a point not to use slang whenever you talk to me?"

"All right. But I'll have to let down easy. You see, I couldn't make myself understood if I had to give it up all at once. You understand me?" He wondered why she smiled.

"Oh yes. School-children have a marvelous faculty of picking up slang phrases."

"Say, but this Cellini guy—"

"What does guy really mean?"

"A guy? Why, a guy is a guy!" William rumpled his hair perplexedly.

"Mr. Grogan, you don't know what the words mean yourself, half the time. How, then, do you expect us outsiders to understand?"

"I guess you've got me there, all right. Well, this Cellini—Dumas wrote a story around him."

"Ascanio."

"That's the boy. My! but the old geezer did some tall scrapping. He only ate when he couldn't get anybody to fight with. And I thought this Cellini person was an invention of Dumas'! Well, I'm on my way around the world, and maybe my bumps won't be strained when I land in little old New York again!" By the time the steward's boy came around with the broth and crackers William had told the story of his life, the humdrum of it, his ambitions which had promised to die of attrition, and then the