Irish tones, high, windy, and angry, yells, and oaths defined
themselves, and Mrs. Harmon came obesely hurrying from the dining-
room toward the office, closely followed by Jerry, the porter. When
upon duty, or, as some of the boarders contended, when in the right
humour, he blacked the boots, and made the hard-coal fires, and
carried the trunks up and down stairs. When in the wrong humour, he
had sometimes been heard to swear at Mrs. Harmon, but she had
excused him in this eccentricity because, she said, he had been with
her so long. Those who excused it with her on these grounds
conjectured arrears of wages as another reason for her patience. His
outbreaks of bad temper had the Celtic uncertainty; the most
innocent touch excited them, as sometimes the broadest snub failed
to do so; and no one could foretell what direction his zigzag fury
would take. He had disliked Lemuel from the first, and had chafed at
the subordination into which he had necessarily fallen. He was now
yelling after Mrs. Harmon, to know if she was not satisfied with
_wan_ gutther-snoipe, that she must nades go and pick up
another, and whether the new wan was going to be too good to take
prisints of money for his worruk from the boarthers, and put all the
rest of the help under the caumpliment of refusin' ut, or else
demanin' themselves by takin' ut? If this was the case, he'd have
her to know that she couldn't kape anny other help; and the quicker
she found it out the betther.
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