Page:Madame Butterfly; Purple eyes; A gentleman of Japan and a lady; Kito; Glory (1904).djvu/152

 "I lig you take it off. Don' lig soach dark-black shiny thing."

"You 've got good taste," said Bob, with a spiteful fling of the garment.

"Oh, how your modder will be angery!"

She fetched the garment from the corner.

"Oh! you gitting it full cob-things."

Which was quite imaginary there was no such thing as a cobweb in the house.

"Sa-ay! Tha' 's a foanny kind clothes!"

She peered at Bob from between the parted tails. It made Bob laugh a little.

"Ah-h-h! Tha' 's nize. 'When you laugh the demons skeered away.'"

She had rendered the proverb with great freedom.

"Now, then! How you are brave once more! "

For Bob's bearing had grown fearfully determined.

The rehearsal of the speech went on.

For, to elucidate a little, the coat was a swallowtail, Bob's first, and the occasion was not merely one of Mrs. Rawlins's Thursday "things" (to quote from Bob's and Kohana-San's private vocabulary), but a much more solemn affair—nothing less, in short, than a going-away party for Bob,