Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/336

 'I'll make her speak, or bust myself,' says Dave.

And I'm blessed if he didn't go on till I was so blanky full of tea that it brimmed over and run out the corners of my mouth; and Dave was near as bad. At last I couldn't drink another teaspoonful without holding back my head, and then I couldn't keep it down, but had to let it run back into the blanky cup again. The girl began to clear away at the other end of the table, and now and then she'd lay her hand on the teapot and squint round to see if we wanted any more tea. But she never spoke. She might have thought a lot―but she never opened her lips.

I tell you, without a word of a lie, that we must have drunk about a dozen cups each. We made her fill the teapot twice, and kept her waitin' nearly an hour, but we couldn't make her say a word. She never said a single word to us from the time we came in till the time we went out, nor before nor after. She'd made up her mind from the first not to speak to us.

We had to get up and leave our cups half full at last. We went out and sat down on our swags in the shade against the wall, and smoked and gave that tea time to settle; and then we got on to the track again.