Tom Moore Part 5

"That is better," said Moore. "You are going home now?"

"No, sir."

"There you go again! Faith, I wish you would say 'Yes' and stick to it.

What are you doing here at this unseasonable hour?"

"I wish to study me lessons," replied Patsy, enthusiastically.

Fairly dashed, Moore returned to Bessie.

"I never saw a lad so fond of his books before," said he.

"It is a new thing for Patsy," said Bessie with a laugh. "There is no bigger dunce in school."

"Is that so?" asked Moore. "Faith, I'm beginning to understand."

Patsy looked sharply over his book at the young poet.

"Can't you study at home, my lad?"

"No, sir."

"Will you never say 'Yes, sir,' again?"

"No, sir."

"Now look here, my young friend, if you say 'Yes, sir,' or 'No, sir,'

again I 'll beat the life out of you."

"_All right_, sir," responded Patsy, plunging his face still deeper into his book.

Moore regarded his small tormentor with a look of dismay.

"You will strain your eyes with so much study, Patsy," he said, warningly. "That is what you will do,--and go blind and have to be led around by a stick, leaning on a small dog."

A suppressed giggle from Bessie drew his attention to his mistake.

"It 's the other way round I mean. Are n't you afraid of that sad fate, my bucko?"

Patsy shook his head and continued his energetic investigation of his arithmetic, while Moore sought counsel from the schoolmistress, who was keenly enjoying her admirer's discomfiture.

"What will I say to the little tinker, Bessie?" he asked, ruefully.

"How should I know, Tom? I am his teacher and will have to help him if he wishes it."

"What is it troubles you?" demanded Moore, looking down on Patsy's red head.

"A sum, sir," replied Patsy.

"Show it to me."

The boy designated an example with his finger.

"'If a man sold forty eggs at one ha'penny an egg,'" read Moore from the book, "'how many eggs--'?"

Shutting up the arithmetic, he put his hand in his pocket and jingled its contents merrily.

"Is the answer to this problem sixpence?" he asked.

"Oh, no, sir," replied Patsy ingenuously.

"What is, then?" demanded Moore, baffled.

"Two s.h.i.+llings," announced the graceless youth.

"I 'll give you one," said Moore, suggesting a compromise, but Patsy was not to be so lowered in his price.

"_Two_ is the answer," he replied in a determined tone.

Moore yielded without further protest and produced the money.

"There you are, you murdering blackmailer," said he. "Now get out before I warm your jacket."

Patsy seized his books, and, dodging a cuff aimed at him by his victim, ran out of the schoolhouse with a derisive yell.

"Bessie," said Moore, solemnly, "that little spalpeen will surely come to some bad end."

"And be hanged?" asked the girl, taking a handful of goose-quills from her desk preparatory to sharpening them into pens with an old knife drawn from the same storehouse.

"Or get married, my sweet girl, though they say death is better than torture," replied Moore, approaching the schoolmistress. "Do you know it cost me two s.h.i.+llings to get a talk with you?"

Bessie smiled and finished a pen with exquisite care.

"Talk is cheap," she observed, carelessly.

"Whoever said that never called at your school, Bessie d.y.k.e," said Moore, perching himself upon her desk. "Turn your face a bit the other way, if you please."

As he spoke he took the girl's round chin in his hands and moved her head until only a side view of her pretty face could be obtained from his post of vantage.

"Do you like my profile so much, Tom?" she asked, submitting docilely to his direction.

"It's not that, Bessie," answered Moore, "it's because I can't stand two such eyes at once. Now there is but one of them looking at me. And such an eye! My heart's jumping under my jacket like a tethered bullfrog with the glance of it. Ah, Bessie, there is only one in the wide world like it."

"And where is that?" asked the girl, a shade of jealousy perceptible in her inquiry.

"Just around the bend of your nose, mavourneen," laughed Moore. "Filled with melted moons.h.i.+ne are both of them. Sure, one soft look from those eyes would make a c.o.c.ked hat out of starlight."

"Would it?" murmured Bessie, charmed in spite of herself. "Do you really mean all you say?"