"I suppose you are going to the Alms House Commissioner," rejoined the Mayor, glancing toward the old building which ran along Chambers street, where many of the public offices were held; "she will be well cared for at Bellevue."
Chester blushed as if he were confessing some fraud, and answered with embarrassment that the little girl would remain with him, at least for the present.
The Mayor looked perfectly satisfied with the answer, bowed and walked forward. On his way up the steps and along the lobby, he occasionally saluted some lawyer that plunged by him with a load of calf-bound volumes pressed ostentatiously under his arm, and paused once or twice to exchange words with a street inspector or petty official, who formed the small wires of his political machinery.
The Mayor spent half an hour in his private office, closeted with his chief clerk, who had been busy over night preparing a speech which his honor was to deliver before some distinguished city guest the next day. In these matters the chief magistrate proved rather hard to please, as he was fond of high-sounding words and poetical ideas, but found them very difficult to commit to memory.
In this case the clerk had done wonders, and taking a copy for study, his honor disposed himself in the great easy-chair of his private room, with the manuscript before him, as if profoundly occupied with some intricate law opinion, and commenced the arduous task of committing the ideas of a better cultivated mind to his own sterile brain. While he was thus occupied, a man entered with a good-humored, blustering air, and threw himself into a seat by the fire, carelessly shaking the Mayor's hand as he passed, as if quite certain of a good reception at all times.
"Busy making out a new veto case, I dare say?" observed the visitor, glancing at the sheet of manuscript which his honor held.
The Mayor folded up his unlearned speech, and turning quietly in his seat, dropped into a desultory conversation with this man about city matters, talking in a circle, and gradually drawing toward the subject which he had at heart, till it seemed to drop in quite by accident.
"Speaking of policemen," said the Mayor, "there is a man in our ward, Alderman, whom I have heard of very often, lately, a tall, gentlemanly sort of a fellow—Chester, I think that is his name. Do you happen to know anything about him?"
"Chester—Chester—yes, I should think so. A fellow that reads like a minister and writes like a clerk; he is a perfect nuisance in the ward. You have no idea what mischief he does with his gentlemanly airs."
"What! a strong politician is he?"