Hoping to make
it appear that I hadn't noticed anything, I dropped my voice a little and
went on, intending, however, to stop at the end of the verse:
"'Malbrouck has gone a-fighting,
Mironton, Mironton, Mirontaine!'
"I ended there; because Malbrouck's heavy hand was laid on my shoulder,
and he said: 'If you please, not that song.'
"I suspect I acted like an idiot. I stammered out apologies, went down
on my litanies, figuratively speaking, and was all the same confident
that my excuses were making bad infernally worse. But somehow the old
chap had taken a liking to me.--No, of course you couldn't understand
that. Not that he was so old, you know; but he had the way of retired
royalty about him, as if he had lived life up to the hilt, and was all
pulse and granite. Then he began to talk in his quiet way about hunting
and fishing; about stalking in the Highlands and tiger-hunting in India;
and wound up with some wonderful stuff about moose-hunting, the sport of
Canada. This made me itch like sin, just to get my fingers on a trigger,
with a full moose-yard in view.
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