Shure, there's no heart till ye!" answered the Irishman, and took another pinch of snuff with a flourish.
........................
Flamingo-like in her bright-coloured, figured gown, with a wild flower in her hair and her gray curls dancing gently at her temples, a little old lady trotted up and down the big sitting-room of Slow Down Ranch, talking volubly and insistently.

One ironically minded would have said she chirruped, for her words came out in not unmusical, if staccato, notes, and she shook her shrivelled, ringed fingers reprovingly at a stalwart young man.
Once or twice, as she seemed to threaten him with what the poet called "The slow, unmoving finger of scorn," he giggled.

It was evident that he was at once amused and troubled.

This voice had cherished and chided him all his life, and he could measure accurately what was behind it.

It was a wilful voice.