“Certainly,” said Stockford; “go ahead.  And you can take him ducking, too, if he wants to go.”

“But he doesn’t want to go—­and won’t go,” replied the Major with a commiserative glance at me.  “Says he doesn’t know a duck from a poll-parrot—­nor how to load a shotgun—­and couldn’t hit a house if he were inside of it and the door shut.  Admits that he nearly killed his uncle once, on the other side of a tree, with a squirrel runnin’ down it.  Don’t want him along!”

Reaching the street with the genial Major, he gave me this advice:  “Now, when you meet Tommy, you mustn’t take all he says for dead earnest, and you mustn’t believe, because he talks loud, and in italics every other word, that he wants to do all the talking and won’t be interfered with.  That’s the way he’s apt to strike folks at first—­but it’s their mistake, not his.  Talk back to him—­controvert him whenever he’s aggressive in the utterance of his opinions, and if you’re only honest in the announcement of your own ideas and beliefs, he’ll like you all the better for standing by them.  He’s quick-tempered, and perhaps a trifle sensitive, so share your greater patience with him, and he’ll pay you back by fighting for you at the drop of the hat.  In short, he’s as nearly typical of his gallant country’s brave, impetuous, fun-loving individuality as such a likeness can exist.”

“But is he quarrelsome?” I asked.

“Not at all.  There’s the trouble.  If he’d only quarrel there’d be no harm done.  Quarreling’s cheap, and Tommy’s extravagant.  A big blacksmith here, the other day, kicked some boy out of his shop, and Tommy, on his cart, happened to be passing at the time; and he just jumped off without a word, and went in and worked on that fellow for about three minutes, with such disastrous results that they couldn’t tell his shop from a slaughter-house; paid an assault and battery fine, and gave the boy a dollar beside, and the whole thing was a positive luxury to him.  But I guess we’d better drop the subject, for here’s his cart, and here’s Tommy.  Hi! there, you Far-down ’Irish Mick!” called the Major, in affected antipathy, “been out raiding the honest farmers’ hen-roosts again, have you?”

We had halted at a corner grocery and produce store, as I took it, and the smooth-faced, shave-headed man in woolen shirt, short vest, and suspenderless trousers so boisterously addressed by the Major, was just lifting from the back of his cart a coop of cackling chickens.

“Arrah! ye blasted Kerryonian!” replied the handsome fellow, depositing the coop on the curb and straightening his tall, slender figure; “I were jist thinking of yez and the ducks, and here ye come quackin’ into the prisence of r’yalty, wid yer canvas-back suit upon ye and the shwim-skins bechuxt yer toes!  How air yez, anyhow—­and air we startin’ for the Kankakee by the nixt post?”