“Swanson!  Swanson!  Oh, ye poor benighted, ignorant foreigner!” and Mike straightened up, slapping his chest proudly.  “Jist ye look at me, now!  Oi’m an O’Brien, do ye moind that?  An O’Brien!  Mother o’ God! we was O’Briens whin the Ark first landed; we was O’Briens whin yer ancestors—­if iver ye had anny—­was wigglin’ pollywogs pokin’ in the mud.  We was kings in ould Oireland, begorry, whin ye was a mollusk, or maybe a poi-faced baboon swingin’ by the tail.  The gall of the loikes of ye to call yerselves min, and dhraw pay wid that sort of thing ferninst ye for a name!  Oi ’ll bet ye niver had no grandfather; ye ’re nothin’ but a it, a son of a say-cook, be the powers!  An’ ye come over here to work for a thafe—­a dhirty, low-down thafe.  Do ye moind that, yer lanthern-jawed spalpeen?  What was it yer did over beyant?”

“Ay ban shovel-man fer Meester Burke—­hard vork.”

“Ye don’t look that intilligent from here.  Work!” with a snort, and waving his pipe in the air.  “Work, is it?  Sure, an’ it’s all the loikes of ye are iver good for.  It ’s not brains ye have at all, or ye ’d take it a bit aisier.  Oi had a haythen Swade foreman oncet over at the ‘Last Chance.’  God forgive me for workin’ undher the loikes of him.  Sure he near worked me to death, he did that, the ignorant furriner.  Work! why, Oi ’m dommed if a green Swade did n’t fall the full length of the shaft one day, an’ whin we wint over to pick him up, what was it ye think the poor haythen said?  He opened his oies an’ asked, ‘Is the boss mad?’ afeared he ‘d lose his job!  An’ so ye was workin’ for a thafe, was ye?  An’ what for?”

“Two tollar saxty cint.”

Mike leaped to his feet as though a spring had suddenly uncoiled beneath him, waving his arms in wild excitement, and dancing about on his short legs.

“Two dollars an’ sixty cints!  Did ye hear that, now?  For the love of Hivin! an’ the union wages three sixty!  Ye ‘re a dommed scab, an’ it’s meself that ’ll wallup ye just for luck.  It’s crazy Oi am to do the job.  What wud the loikes of ye work for Misther Hicks for?”

Swanson’s impassive face remained imperturbable; he stroked the moustaches dangling over the corners of his dejected mouth.

“Two tollar saxty cint.”

Mike glared at him, and then at the girl, his own lips puckering.

“Bedad, Oi belave the poor cr’ater do n’t know anny betther.  Shure, ’t is not for an O’Brien to be wastin’ his toime thryin’ to tache the loikes of him the great sacrets of thrade.  It wud be castin’ pearls afore swine, as Father Kinny says.  Did iver ye hear tell of the Boible, now?”

“Ay ban Lutheran.”

“An’ what’s that?  It’s a Dimocrat Oi am, an’ dom the O’Brien that’s annything else.  But Oi niver knew thar was anny of thim other things hereabout.  It’s no prohibitioner ye are, annyhow, fer that stuff in yer bottle wud cook a snake.  Sufferin’ ages! but it had an edge to it that wud sharpen a saw.  What do ye think of ther blatherin’ baste annyhow, seenorita?”