“Yes, your honor.” Then coming over to where I sat, the red-faced man continued: “You hunt me up to-morrow—Big John Kennedy—that's my name. Any cop can tell you where to find me.”
“Yes, sir,” I answered faintly.
“There's two things about you,” said the red-faced man, rubbing my stubble of hair with his big paw, “that's great in a boy. You can hit like the kick of a pony; an' you can keep your mouth shut. I aint heard a yelp out of you, mor'n if you was a Boston terrier.” This, admiringly.
As we left the magistrate's office—the red-faced man, the reputable old gentleman, my father, Apple Cheek, and myself, with Anne holding my hand as though I were some treasure lost and regained—the reputable old gentleman spoke up pompously to the red-faced man.
“I commend what you have done, sir; but in that connection, and as a taxpayer, let me tell you that I resent your attitude towards the magistrate. You issued your orders, sir, and conducted yourself toward that officer of justice as though you owned him.”
“Well, what of it?” returned the red-faced man composedly. “I put him there. What do you think I put him there for? To give me the worst of it?”
“Sir, I do not understand your expressions!” said the reputable old gentleman. “And I resent them! Yes, sir, I resent them as a taxpayer of this town!”
“Say,” observed the red-faced man benignantly, “there's nothin' wrong about you but your head. You had better take a term or two at night school an' get it put on straight. You say you're a taxpayer; you've already fired the fact at me about five times. An' now I ask you: Suppose you be?”
“Taxpayer; yes, sir, taxpayer!” repeated the reputable old gentleman, in a mighty fume. “Do you intend to tell me there's no meaning to the word?”
“It means,” said the red-faced man in the slow manner of one who gives instruction; “it means that if you're nothin' but a taxpayer—an' I don't think you be or you'd have told us—you might as well sit down. You're a taxpayer, eh? All right; I'm a ward-leader of Tammany Hall. You're a taxpayer; good! I'm the man that settles how much you pay, d'ye see!” Then, as though sympathy and disgust were blended: “Old man, you go home and take a hard look at the map, and locate yourself. You don't know it, but all the same you're in New York.”