“Show me $500 in the bank, Michael Phelan, and I’ll talk business.”
And why didn’t Michael Phelan save up $500 out of the more than $100 a month the city paid him for his services? Rose didn’t get a quarter of that, and she had already saved $300, besides which she sent a one-pound note home to Ireland every month.
The reason was this––Michael Phelan turned in his wages each month to his mother, and out of what she allowed him to spend he couldn’t have saved $500 in five hundred years, at least not to his way of thinking. The trouble was that Rose had more than an inkling of this, and it galled her to think that her gallant brass-buttoned cop should permit himself to be still harnessed to his mother’s apron strings.
Yes, down in the invisible depths of Rose’s heart she was very fond of the faithful and long-suffering Michael, but even so she couldn’t bring herself to marry a milksop who was likely to make her play second fiddle to his mother. And when Rose once made 98 up her mind, she was as grimly determined as she was pretty.
The sun had swung down behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the trees that bordered the Park wall had begun to trace their shadows on the marble fronts of the mansions across the way when Rose suddenly wheeled the gig containing Master Croesus and walked demurely toward Officer 666.
Michael Phelan blushed till he could feel his back hair singeing, but he stopped stock still and waited. Rose gave no sign until she was within half a dozen feet of him. Then she looked up pertly and exclaimed:
“Why, if it ain’t Michael Phelan!”
“It is, Rose, an’ with the same question pantin’ on his lips,” broke out the young man, his bosom surging and his heart rapping under his shield.
“And what is that same question, Mr. Phelan?” asked the tantalizing Rose.
Officer 666 choked with emotion.