"Merciful powers!" ejaculated Mrs. Malone, jumping a foot at least. "Phwat 's thot?"
Buster fled downstairs fearful of impending massacre, while Moore behind the screen began giving an imitation of a man in the throes of an ice-cold bath, bursting into musicless song punctuated with exclamations of discomfort and shivery comments on his condition.
he shouted, slopping the water from pitcher to pail and back again, adding sotto voce, "But not from the landlady, worse luck--Oh! I 'll die of the cold! I know I will. Oh, mother, it's a cake of ice your beloved Thomas is fast becoming.
--Only her young hero is freezing instead of sleeping. Help! Help! Whew-w-w! Murder, murder, I 'm dying of the chill!"
Mrs. Malone in speechless rage had unwound the wet towel from around her neck.
"You divil!" she remarked, with the calmness of despair. "You red-handed rapscallion. You 've spiled me best Sunday Get-Up-and-Go-to-Early-Morning-Mass-Cap. Oh, you haythen!--you turk! Hanging is too good for the likes of you."
Moore, bawling and singing at the top of his lungs, heard nothing of the landlady's desperation.
"And lovers around her are sighing, But coldly she turns--
Faith, the dear girl must have been taking a cold bath herself, I 'm thinking. Oh, murder! No! For, if that were so, how could the lovers be around her? No, indeed, no lady decent enough for Tom Moore to immortalize in song would be guilty of such immodesty, I am sure.
"But coldly she turns from their gaze and weeps, For her heart in his grave is lying.
"Oh, where is that soap?" and then again bursting into song, he warbled:
"Where _is_ that soap? _Where_ is _that_ soap? Oh, _where_ in Blazes _is_ that so-o-o-ap?
"I 'll do nuthing of the kind," replied Mrs. Malone, ferociously.
"In half a jiffy I 'll come out there and give you the leathering you deserve for insubordination."
"Oh!" cried the landlady. "And me here, Bridget Malone."
"What?" exclaimed Moore, as though suspecting her presence for the first time. "Are _you_ there, Mrs. Malone? Whew! but this water is cold."
His head, with hair, wet and tousled, sticking up every which way, appeared above the top of the screen, being elevated just enough to keep his shirt band out of sight, thus preventing the betrayal of his subterfuge to the landlady.