Читать книгу While Rivers Run - Maurice Walsh - Страница 14

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“Any objection to smoking, Miss Brands?” Long inquired of Margaret, who sat in the basket-chair near the fire. Permission given, he threw his pouch across to Aelec at the table-end. “Try mine,” he invited. “You’ll maybe find it light for you.”

“Thanks. I like to flavour the smoke myself, and strong baccy has nothing to it but its strength.”

“You are a smoker, I see.”

The two filled their pipes slowly. Don Webster, after some hesitation, lit a black cheroot. Aelec, smiling at a thought of his own, looked sideways through the smoke at the Irishman. “You might be able to enlighten me on a small matter, Mr Long,” he hazarded.

“Nothing but religion is the worse for being considered this way and that.”

“Suppose, now, that a man called you the cat’s whiskers, what would you think of him?”

“Thunder and turf! Did anyone call me that?”

“No, no, Mr Long. It wasn’t about you——”

“Why, you wouldn’t call a tramp going the road a name like that!”

And Aelec, looking solemnly at him, caught the gleam in the deep eye and the twitch of the lined mouth. “Man,” he said, “you had me going that time.”

Then the two chuckled together, and Margaret added her smile.

“Let me see, now,” considered Long. “Suppose a man you knew and met often had a habit of saying, ‘Come in and have a drink’——”

“He’d be a gey hard man to quarrel with.”

“In fact, the cat’s whiskers. A Yankeeism, I believe”; and Long’s knowing expression indicated the closed door.

“Oh, it was only his way of saying what another man said”; and Aelec smiled reminiscently. “ ‘A gran’ chiel,’ says the Moray man; ‘the cat’s whiskers,’ says another; and there was me doubting a good man. But I suppose that’s the way o’t.”

“ ’Tis so,” said the Irishman. Then he stiffened at gaze. His eye had lighted on the dog sitting calmly in the doorway. “ ‘Do I sleep, do I dream, or is visions about?’ How did that tarrier dog get so far from home?—Here, Kerry.”

The blue-grey, shaggy, broad-headed terrier took not the slightest notice. Aelec Brands flicked thumb and finger. “Go on, Fruachan. Meet your countryman.”

The dog came quietly across the floor and touched a nose against the Irishman’s tweed knee.

“You are welcome, Kerryman,” said Long softly. “We are far from home, the both of us.” He put a long hand on the broad head and ran it down the heavily muscled neck. “He has it in the right place.—See this fellow, Don—the jaw, and the steady deep eye, and that curve of muscle behind the ears, and the way he plants his big pads—the greatest fighting-machine in the world: the Kerry-blue terrier.”

“I would say a bull-terrier—” began Webster.

“I wish you had one——”

“Don’t listen, Fruachan,” urged Margaret. “You are a gentleman, and only defend yourself against unmannerly dogs.”

“I wager he teaches them a thing or two besides manners,” said Long.

“I warrant you,” said Aelec. “I thought you’d know the breed.”

“I should. I mind once owning a dog like that one—Haro was his name—and he helped to get me seven days in jail.”

Out of the corner of an eye he noticed the slight start Margaret gave, and turned to her. “Upon my soul, Miss Brands,” he said with whimsical solemnity, “that was the first and last time I was in jail”; and she smiled understandingly.

“You can always blame the dog,” put in Don Webster.

“It would be a good story, I’m thinking,” hinted Aelec.

“If I could tell it,” said the Irishman, and proceeded to do so.