Page:Mehalah 1920.djvu/141

Rh The cripple tucked his recovered crutches under his arms, rolled himself off his chair, and stumped vehemently half a dozen times round the room. He returned at length, out of breath, and very hot, to his chair, into which he cast himself. "Put up my legs, please," he begged of Elijah. "There!" he said, "I have worked off my excitement a little. Now go into the hall and look in the box under the stairs, there you will find an Union Jack. Run it up to the top of the mast. I don't care. I will defy her. When that girl who came here the other day—I forget her name—sees the flag flying she will come and help me. If Admonition has cousins, so have I, and mine are real cousins. I doubt but those of Admonition are nothing of the sort. If that girl" "What girl?" asked Rebow gloomily, as he folded his arms across his breast, and scowled at Charles Pettican. "I don't know her name, but it is written down. I have it in my note-book—Ah! Mehalah Sharland. She is my cousin, her mother is my cousin. I'll tell you what I will do, master. But before I say another word, you go up for me into the best bedroom—the blue room, and chuck that fellow's things out of the window over the balcony, and let the gull have the pecking and tearing of them to pieces. I know he has his best jacket on his back; more's the pity. I should like the gull to have the clawing and the beaking of that, but he can make a tidy mess of his other traps; and will do it." "Glory" began Elijah. "Ah! you are right there," said Pettican. "It will be glory to have routed cousin Timothy out of the house; and if the flag flies, my cousin—I forget her name—Oh! I see, Mehalah—will come here and bring her mother, and before Master Timothy returns with Admonition from market—they are going to have a shilling's worth on a merry-go-round, I heard them scheme it—my cousins will be in possession, and cousin Timothy must content himself with the balcony, or cruise off." "Gloryor Mehalah, as you call her." "I'll not listen to another word, till you have chucked that fellow's traps overboard. There's a portmantle of