The experience had not been without a novel interest. Holiday traffic crowded the streets; traffic officers, tired and chilled by a biting east wind, were not patient. Adriance chose Fifth Avenue for his route up-town with the naturalness of long custom, without reflecting upon the greater freedom of travel he would have found on one of the dingy streets usually followed by such vehicles as his. However, the difficulties exhilarated him. Andy of the truck could not but wonder how the policeman who roughly ordered him away from the entrance of the Park might have phrased that request if he had known that the intruder was Tony Adriance, "paper, you know!" Perhaps, because of this wonder, his cheerful grin drew a sour smile from the officer.
"Don't you know you've not got a limousine there? You from the woods?" came the not ill-natured sarcasm.
"Worse than that: from Jersey," Adriance shot back. "All right; I'm sorry."
"Plain streets for yours; round the circle," was the direction, which also implied a release.
"Thanks," Adriance called acknowledgment, as he obeyed.
The bulky figure beside the chauffeur stirred.
"You got a nerve," commented the man, his slow, heavy voice tinged with admiration. "I seen guys pulled fer less, Andy."
Adriance laughed. He and his big assistant were very good friends, after weeks of sharing the truck's seat. The chauffeur appeared a stripling by comparison with the man lounging beside him, huge arms folded across thick chest. "Mike," as he was known to his fellow-workers, was a Russian peasant. His upbringing in a Hoboken slum had fixed his patriotism and language, but had left his physique that of his inheritance. His reddish-yellow head was set on a massive neck whose base his open shirt showed to be covered with a red growth of hair extending down over his chest. His large features and mild, slow-moving eyes, his heavy, placid manner of speech were absurdly alien to the colloquial language that he spoke. Adriance knew his helper had been an employee of the factory for ten years, but he did not know that Mike was always assigned to a new chauffeur until the stranger proved himself trustworthy. Mike was dull, but he was stolidly honest. Valuable boxes or packages were not reported "lost" from trucks under his care. Adriance had no idea of the truth that "Russian Mike" actually had determined the permanence of his position in his father's great mill.
"If I cannot go through the Park, I'll go back to the avenue," Adriance declared, when the turning had been negotiated. "I want gayety, Michael; boulevard gayety! Four o'clock on Fifth Avenue—shall a poor workingman be deprived of the sight? It is true that we are too far uptown, but the principle is the same. You agree with me?"
"It ain't nothin' to me," averred the magnificent guardian, shifting to a new position with an indolent movement that swelled the muscles under his flannel shirt until the fabric strained. His glance at his companion was mildly indulgent.