“Well,” Keighley promised placidly, for the fourth time, “I’ll think it over.”
Noonan plucked from between his teeth the frayed butt of a cigar chewed to tatters. “Now look a-here,” he said hoarsely, “I’m yer friend I’m tellin’ yeh, Dan; but I can’t go back with no such answer. An’ you know it. Take it er leave it. There’s promotion in it the one way, an’ there’s trouble th’ other. Are yeh with us, er are yeh not, now?”
Keighley looked out the window and scratched the back of his hand. “This crew,” he said, “when I took a hold here, it was the makin’ of a mince-pie. An’ it’d ’a’ been the worst mess o’ nuthin’ in the whole department if I’d run it Jigger er anti-Jigger er anythin’ else but straight bus’ness to put out fires. I got nuthin’ against the actin’-chief ner his gang. They ain’t botherin’ me any.”
Noonan had a long, round upper lip that met a round, protruding under one in a mouth like a rent in a rubber ball. He opened it, and then shut it again in a politic effort to control his temper, “Dan,” he said at last, “I like a joke, but I’m no more a damn fool than y’ are yerself,—mind that now! Yeh’ve been fightin’ half yer comp’ny fer the month gone, an’ yeh think yeh’ve won. They ain’t botherin’ y’ any now—no. Yeh think they’ve had enough—an’ mebbe they have. Mebbe they have. But there’s them that ain’t!” He stopped himself. He plugged his mouth with his cigar again, and puffed it till it crackled. “Have sense, now,” he said. “Have sense, man. Here’s yer chance to get the best that’s goin’. Will yeh take it er leave it?”
Keighley had turned to listen to the tinkle of a telephone bell in the sitting room where the apparatus of the fire alarm was stationed.
“Will yeh take it er leave it?” Noonan demanded.
Keighley did not answer. He swung around in his swivel chair. Some one rapped at the door, and he called, “Come!”
Lieutenant Moore looked in to report, “A telephone call from headquarters. Soap works afire at Nohunk. They want us to keep it off the coal docks.”
They were the department’s coal docks.
Keighley ordered, “Cast off.” He turned to Noonan. “Better come along with us,” he said. “It’ll be cooler outside.”