"'Good morrow to you, Daniel O'Rourke,' said he; 'how do you do?'
'Very well, thank your honour,' said I. 'I hope your honour's well.'
'What brought you here, Dan?' said he. So I told him how I was a
little overtaken in liquor at the master's, and how I was cast on a
_dissolute_ island, and how I lost my way in the bog, and how the
thief of an eagle promised to fly me out of it, and how, instead of
that, he had fled me up to the moon.
"'Dan,' said the man in the moon, taking a pinch of snuff when I was
done, 'you must not stay here.' 'Indeed, sir,' says I, ''tis much
against my will I'm here at all; but how am I to go back?' 'That's
your business,' said he; 'Dan, mine is to tell you that here you must
not stay; so be off in less than no time.' 'I'm doing no harm,' says
I, 'only holding on hard by the reaping-hook, lest I fall off.'
'That's what you must not do, Dan,' says he. 'Pray, sir,' says I, 'may
I ask how many you are in family, that you would not give a poor
traveller lodging: I'm sure 'tis not so often you're troubled with
strangers coming to see you, for 'tis a long way.' 'I'm by myself,
Dan,' says he; 'but you'd better let go the reaping-hook.' 'Faith, and
with your leave,' says I, 'I'll not let go the grip, and the more you
bids me, the more I won't let go;--so I will.' 'You had better, Dan,'
says he again. 'Why, then, my little fellow,' says I, taking the whole
weight of him with my eye from head to foot, 'there are two words to
that bargain; and I'll not budge, but you may if you like.' 'We'll see
how that is to be,' says he; and back he went, giving the door such a
great bang after him (for it was plain he was huffed) that I thought
the moon and all would fall down with it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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