Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/153

 opened the Cottrell's door to him. He was, by the very nature of his connection, an outsider.

It was a warm night, the wind not more than a breath in comparison with its daytime vigor, a portent of rain in the gabbling of the frogs along the river. Hall returned to his office sweating from his exertions with the pudgy Delia O'Hare, to find Little Jack Ryan sitting complacently in the door as he had left him, smoking a cigar in honor of the celebration. Jack said Edwin Blewitt, sole representative of England on the boarding-train, was making trouble over among the kegs.

"Somebody'll lay the little divil out flat," Jack said, "and a good job it'll be for him. He has one song in him that he wants to sing when he's dhrinkin', no thought in him of the accoutrements of it. Last winther he sung it when Aggie Mooney, the section boss' daughter, was married to a Swede carpenter be the name of Sorenson. It was a lucky job—"

"What is the song?" Hall inquired, genuinely interested in such a musical sensation.

"I don't know the title of it, if it has one, and the worruds of it I never heard, barrin' the big-innin'. I've heard Blewitt attimpt it many times, but he's never gone past the worruds where he says: 'Hold Hireland, wot 'ast thou come to!' He got along with it to that p'int at Aggie Mooney's weddin', where they sthrangled him off. Siven sthrong men leaped on him and throwed him out on his neck. He's sthrugglin' with 'em now to mount the flure and sing that same song. The man has no dacency in him at all."

"So they'll not allow Blewitt to sing it?" Hall said,