Tom's fingers closed tightly. Her collar began to feel small. “An' I s'pose if ye said I should pay me men double wages, and put up the price o' haulin' so high that me customers couldn't pay it, so that some of yer dirty loafers could cut in an' git it, I'd have to do it, whether I wanted to or not; or maybe ye think I'd oughter chuck some o' me own boys into the road because they don't belong to yer branch, as ye call it, and git a lot o' dead beats to work in their places who don't know a horse from a coal-bucket. An' ye'll help me, will ye? Come out here on the front porch, Mr. Crimmins”—opening the door with a jerk. “Do ye see that stable over there! Well, it covers seven horses; an' the shed has six carts with all the harness. Back of it—perhaps if ye stand on yer toes even a little feller like you can see the top of another shed. That one has me derricks an' tools.”
Crimmins tried to interrupt long enough to free McGaw's red pepper, but her words poured out in a torrent.
“Now ye can go back an' tell Dan McGaw an' the balance of yer two-dollar loafers that there ain't a dollar owin' on any horse in my stable, an' that I've earned everything I've got without a man round to help 'cept those I pays wages to. An' ye can tell 'em, too, that I'll hire who I please, an' pay 'em what they oughter git; an' I'll do me own haulin' an' unloadin' fer nothin' if it suits me. When ye said ye were a walkin' delegate ye spoke God's truth. Ye'd be a ridin' delegate if ye could; but there's one thing ye'll niver be, an' that's a workin' delegate, as long as ye kin find fools to pay ye wages fer bummin' round day 'n' night. If I had me way, ye would walk, but it would be on yer uppers, wid yer bare feet to the road.”
Crimmins again attempted to speak, but she raised her arm threateningly: “Now, if it's walkin' ye are, ye can begin right away. Let me see ye earn yer wages down that garden an' into the road. Come, lively now, before I disgrace meself a-layin' hands on the likes of ye!”
V. A WORD FROM THE TENEMENTS
One morning Patsy came up the garden path limping on his crutch; the little fellow's eyes were full of tears. He had been out with his goat when some children from the tenements surrounded his cart, pitched it into the ditch, and followed him half way home, calling “Scab! scab!” at the top of their voices. Cully heard his cries, and ran through the yard to meet him, his anger rising at every step. To lay hands on Patsy was, to Cully, the unpardonable sin. Ever since the day, five years before, when Tom had taken him into her employ, a homeless waif of the streets,—his father had been drowned from a canal-boat she was unloading,—and had set him down beside Patsy's crib to watch while she was at her work, Jennie being at school, Cully had loved the little cripple with the devotion of a dog to its master. Lawless, rough, often cruel, and sometimes vindictive as Cully was to others, a word from Patsy humbled and softened him.
And Patsy loved Cully. His big, broad chest, stout, straight legs, strong arms and hands, were his admiration and constant pride. Cully was his champion and his ideal. The waif's recklessness and audacity were to him only evidences of so much brains and energy.
This love between the lads grew stronger after Tom had sent to Dublin for her old father, that she might have “a man about the house.” Then a new blessing came, not only into the lives of both the lads, but into the whole household as well. Mullins, in his later years, had been a dependent about Trinity College, and constant association with books and students had given him a taste for knowledge denied his daughter. Tom had left home when a girl. In the long winter nights during the slack season, after the stalls were bedded and the horses were fed and watered and locked up for the night, the old man would draw up his chair to the big kerosene lamp on the table, and tell the boys stories—they listening with wide-open eyes, Cully interrupting the narrative every now and then by such asides as “No flies on them fellers, wuz ther', Patsy? They wuz daisies, they wuz. Go on, Pop; it's better'n a circus;” while Patsy would cheer aloud at the downfall of the vanquished, with their “three thousand lance-bearers put to death by the sword,” waving his crutch over his head in his enthusiasm.
Jennie would come in too, and sit by her mother; and after Nilsson's encounter with Quigg—an incident which greatly advanced him in Tom's estimation—Cully would be sent to bring him in from his room over the stable and give him a chair with the others, that he might learn the language easier. At these times it was delightful to watch the expression of pride and happiness that would come over Tom's face as she listened to her father's talk.