The next moment he was running along the dock, the
money envelope tight in his hand, sticking out his tongue at
McGaw, and calling to Lathers as he disappeared through the door
in the fence, "Somp'n wid a mustache, somp'n wid a mustache," like
a news-boy calling an extra. Then a stone grazed Lathers's ear.
Lathers sprang through the gate, but the boy was half way through
the yard. It was this flea-like alertness that always saved Mr.
Finnegan's scalp.
Once out of Lathers's reach, Cully bounded up the road like a
careering letter X, with arms and legs in air. If there was any
one thing that delighted the boy's soul, it was, to quote from his
own picturesque vocabulary, "to set up a job on de ole woman."
Here was his chance. Before he reached the stable he had planned
the whole scene, even to the exact intonation of Lathers's voice
when he referred to the dearth of mustaches in the Grogan
household. Within a few minutes of his arrival the details of the
whole occurrence, word for word, with such picturesque additions
as his own fertile imagination could invent, were common talk
about the yard.
Lathers meanwhile had been called upon to direct a gang of
laborers who were moving an enormous iron buoy-float down the
cinder-covered path to the dock. Two of the men walked beside the
buoy, steadying it with their hands.
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