The Child of Waterloo, or, The Horrors of the Battle-Field — page 93: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

90 THE CHILD OF WATERLOO. would have been a sufficient answer; but poor Mabel had not the art to read any one’s countenance, and she only waited with clasped hands and a most anxious expression of face, for what reply Rafferty would make to her. ** Who said you wasn’t, Miss Mabel ?” ‘** Read this.” Rafferty Brolickbones was rather a slow reader of writing, but he contrived to make out the general purport of what was said in the note to Mabel, and when he had done so, he gave it back to her, saying: ‘** Sorrow be to the hand that wrote that, and sorrow will be to the top of his head, Miss Mabel, if he comes across me.” ‘*Ts it true ?” “True? Oh, you want to know is it true? Ob, that’s it— is it true, you want to know? Of course, it’s mighty natural that you want to know.” ‘** Rafferty, are you determined upon driving me distracted? If so, pursue the course you are now adopting, and you will succeed. I ever considered you as a friend, and one to whom I would never appeal in vain, but now I see my error.” ‘Error, Miss Mabel? Ha, bedad, and the holy poker, and all the holy fire-irons, you are wrong there. Just show me the mighty illigant fire, and the great sheet of water I wouldn’t go through any day of the week, Miss Mabel, to do you a service.” ‘Then why refuse me the simple request I now make? Surely nothing can be more simple than telling me if Iam,to your knowledge, the child of Captain Morton or not?” ‘* By the holy, hasn’t he done a father’s duty by you ?” *‘He has; but yet my heart yearns to know the truth.” “‘ Miss Mabel, will you give a poor fellow half an hour to gather his wits about him, and think a little before he gives an answer?” “Yes, yes.” ‘“Then come to me, Miss Mabel, at the end of that time, and in the meantime I'l] think.” ‘*T will come to you, Rafferty, and let meiniplore you to keep this affair a profound secret from every one.” “You neeln’t be after telling me that,” said Rafferty. ‘I wouldn’t tell it to the Pope himself. Oh, murder!” he contin- ued, when he found himself alone. ‘‘Oh, murder and turf, here’s a pretty piece of business. Miss Mabel will be after find- ing out dhat she isn’t Miss Mabel, at all, at all.” Poor Rafferty was so cut up with the prospect of what might occur, that probably he had a more serious face upon the oc- casion than he had ever had since the memorable morning on the field of Waterloo, when he had that, as he called it, ‘‘ mighty illigant” cut on the head that disabled him from action. ‘*What’s to be done? That’s the question, as the fellow with the mully-grubs in the play says.” Accustomed, however, to prompt action as was Rafferty, from his early military habits, he was not likely to remain long Ja- menting without endeavoring, at allevents, to adopt some means comicbooks. com