Page:McClure's Magazine v9 n3 to v10 no2.djvu/363



URE, it's sorry I am for the creachure, " said Mrs. Patrick Fitzmaurice to her only son, Tommy. This was in the year when Tommy was in training as a candidate for mayor; indeed, the primaries were to be held that week. As the little Irishwoman spoke she glanced up wistfully at Tommy's handsome face, and brushed an imperceptible trace of dust from his coat-sleeve. Tommy began to guess what was coming.

"And what does she want you to do, ma?" said he, slipping his arm about her waist and looking fondly down at the face that was pretty to him still, although to most people it was but a wrinkled little Irish face with violet eyes and a long upper lip. "She's after you for something—that I know."

"Why, she has no sinse at all, Tommy; and she puts me out of me temper with the way she goes on, till I clean forget she is me third cousin on me stepmother's side and I want to tell her to be quiet; but then I think of how old she is, and with no children: never a chick nor a child did Tim and she have to bless them, Tommy; and many's the time she looks at you, and I can see the sigh in her eyes that she's too proud to let drop from her lips; and then I think, 'Well, if she does make a time over an ould box, it's hers, and maybe the forlorn creachure vallys it; maybe, not having any humans to love, she has to take it out on her things."

"That box she lost in the custom-house in Chicago, I suppose," says Tommy, patiently. "She isn't nagging you to have me go to Chicago, is she?"

"Well, that very same she is, Tommy. And I to aid her, says I, he's busy wid important business of the election, says I, and he ain't got the time. But the creachure don't seem to have good sinse, for all she says is, 'It was owing to him I took it to Chicago instid of to New York to the customs there; and now it's lost!' Meself, I wonder she didn't lose ivery box she had, comin' a wake before she was ixpectid and we not meeting her; for she can't so much as go down town alone."

Tommy was swallowing his annoyance. He loved his mother, whatever he might think of her stepmother's third cousin; and he knew how his mother must have been harried to bring her to the point of asking a journey of him this particular week. It was a nuisance, and it might well be a risk, to leave just now, but he would chance it; and having resolved to chance it, he would not spoil a kind act by an ill grace in the doing. Therefore he laughed as he smoothed his mother's thin but still silky hair; and told her that he could manage to get off to Chicago and that she might assure Mrs. Sullivan that he would look up every unclaimed article of luggage in the Chicago customs.

He might have felt repaid had he seen his mother, that evening, wiping her eyes while she repeated the scene to his father, who puffed hard on his pipe. "And you won't deny, Pat, he is the bist son in the country!"

"I ain't thinkin' of sons," said the ex-saloon-keeper grimly; "I'm thinkin' of mothers that lets their sons throw away their chances to gratify the fool whims of a doddering ould woman. Tom has no business to be out of town this wake, and well he knows it."

"And for why not, Pat?"

"For why? Because he has got to go, to-morrow, no later, to the meeting, and Paulsen will be at the meeting, and the other men; and 'specially for Paulsen they want Tommy to be there. Ye know how Tommy talks and the persuasiveness of him"—the father could not hide a lurking smile—"well, they're hoping whin Paulsen hears him he'll listen to rason and go in for him. And Harry Tossing, he's going to see Paulsen and persuade him how sound Tommy is about kaping the saloons down and yit raising enough rivinue for the ixpenses, and how he'll look moighty scharp after the contracts, and there won't be no boodlin' games countenanced noways; and he'll take the police