Page:The Curious Republic of Gondour, and Other Whimsical Sketches.djvu/101

Rh tested that I had not meant anything disrespectful. Then one of them took me to one side and said:

“Now look here, Johnny, it’s no use you playing softly wid us. We mane business, ye know; and the sooner ye put us on the scent of a V, the asier yell save yerself from a dale of trouble. Ye can’t get out o’ this for anny less. Who’s your frinds?”

I told him I had not a single friend in all the land of America, and that I was far from home and help, and very poor. And I begged him to let me go.

He gathered the slack of my blouse collar in his grip and jerked and shoved and hauled at me across the dungeon, and then unlocking an iron cell-gate thrust me in with a kick and said:

“Rot there, ye furrin spawn, till ye lairn that there’s no room in America for the likes of ye or your nation.”