“I'll denounce you at home for inefficiency.”
“Have a cot bed?”
“Get out!”
“Pleasant dreams!” he said. “It 'll be a hot night;” and with that he went off grinning.
The afternoon wore away slowly. I began to think the Mayor might have me down after all, and wondered if Chepa would run the plant that night with a detachment of pink soldiery over him. I sent a guard after some lunch. No one else came except my lawyer, who brought some newspapers, and said the Mayor was blushing all over with happiness and conceit. He said there were crowds in the Plaza, and sure enough you could hear the mutter and shuffle of them, for the Plaza was but a few blocks away. It seemed to me they were making more noise than before, and when the lawyer was gone, and the afternoon was late, it seemed to have grown to a kind of dull roaring, with shouts and howls intermixed. The peons in the patio were stirring about, too, and jabbering. The dusk was coming on faintly.
CHAPTER XXV—MRS. ULSWATER'S INSURRECTION
THERE was a clatter and tramp of feet in the street outside. The door of the patio flew open with a bang.
“Take your dirty hands off me!” Bang, went the door again, and there in the patio stood a little squat Irishman with red hair and stubby black clay pipe in his mouth.