We are the birds a-flyin' south, and
Flannagan was the shiver in the air. Flannagan is a reg'lar
frost. Gee! but I betcha dat guy's sore."
"Why is it, Billy," asked Bridge, after a moment's silence,
"that upon occasion you speak king's English after the manner
of the boulevard, and again after that of the back alley?
Sometimes you say 'that' and 'dat' in the same sentence. Your
conversational clashes are numerous. Surely something or
someone has cramped your original style."
"I was born and brought up on 'dat,'" explained Billy.
"SHE taught me the other line of talk. Sometimes I forget. I
had about twenty years of the other and only one of hers,
and twenty to one is a long shot--more apt to lose than
win."
"'She,' I take it, is PENELOPE," mused Bridge, half to
himself. "She must have been a fine girl."
"'Fine' isn't the right word," Billy corrected him. "If a
thing's fine there may be something finer, and then something
else finest. She was better than finest. She--she was--why,
Bridge, I'd have to be a walking dictionary to tell you what
she was."
Bridge made no reply, and the two trudged on toward the
whitewashed hut in silence for several minutes. Then Bridge
broke it:
And you, my sweet Penelope, out there somewhere you wait for me
With buds of roses in your hair and kisses on your mouth.
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