he native
language."

"Moonshine, is it! By jabers, and it's a mighty poor compliment to the
moon to call him so. And is it the language you're going to larn now?
Shure, Mr. Charles, I wouldn't demane myself by larning the lingo of
these black hathens. Isn't for them to larn the English, and mighty
pleased they ought to be, to get themselves to spake like Christians."

"But who's going to teach them, Tim?"

"Oh, they larn fast enough," said Tim. "You've only got to point to a
bottle of water, or to the fire, or whatever else you want, and swear
at them, and they understand directly. I've tried it myself, over and
over again."

"There, Tim, it's no use standing talking any longer. Bring in the
moonshee."

From that moment, the little man had his permanent post in a corner of
the boys' room; and, when they were not on duty, they were constantly
engaged in studying the language, writing down the names of every
object they came across and getting it by heart, and learning every
sentence, question, and answer which occurred to them as likely to be
useful.

As for Tim, he quite lost patience at this devotion to study on the
part of his master; who, he declared to his comrades, went on just as
if he intended to become a nigger and a hathen himself.

"It's just awful to hear him, Corporal M'Bean, jabbering away in that
foreign talk, with that little black monkey moonshine. The little
cratur a-twisting his shrivelled fingers about, that looks as if the
bones were coming through the skin. I wonder what the good father at
Blarney, where I come from, you know, Corporal, would say to sich
goings on. Faith, then, and if he were here, I'd buy a bottle of holy
water, and sprinkle it over the little hathen. I suspict he'd fly
straight up the chimney, when it touched him."

"My opinion of you, Tim Kelly," the corporal, who was a grave
Scotchman, said; "is that you're just a fule. Your master is a brave
young gentleman, and is a deal more sensible than most of them, who
spend all their time in drinking wine and playing cards. A knowledge
of the language is most useful. What would you do, yourself, if you
were to marry a native woman, and couldn't speak to her afterwards."

"The saints defind us!" Tim exclaimed; "and what put such an idea in
yer head, Corporal? It's nayther more nor less than an insult to
suppose that I, a dacent boy, and brought up under the teaching of
Father O'Shea, should marry a hathen black woman; and if