Page:Ruth Fielding at Briarwood Hall.djvu/79

Rh joining than had the stout girl, Jennie Stone, on their way to this meeting. The party broke up in such good season, that it was scarcely dark when the chums left the room in the dining hall and strolled back to their dormitory with their new friends. The lamps around the campus were being lighted by a little old Irishman, who wore a wreath of short, gray whiskers and hair about his face—a regular frame. His long upper lip and his chin were shaven, and this arrangement gave him a most comical appearance.

"You're late again to-night, Tony," Jennie Stone remarked, as she and Ruth came down the steps of the dining hall together.

The little Irishman backed down the short flight of steps he carried, with a groan. He had just lighted the final lamp of the series that surrounded the campus.

"And well I might be—well I might be," grumbled the man. "'Tis me needs fower pair of hands, instead of wan pair, and as many legs as a cinterpig." Tony evidently meant centipede. "'Tis 'Tony, here!' and 'Tony, there!' iv'ry blissid minute av th' day. An' 'tis movin' trunks, an' boxes, and the like—Mis' Grace should hire a nelephant at this time of the year, an' so I tell her. An' what with these here foreigners, too—bad 'cess to them! I have to chase ev'ry rag, tag, and bobtail off the place, so I do"