"I'm afraid I'm fixed where I am. I'm not easily turned, Nanna."
"Oh, yeh! Well, well—in one minute, Timmie avic, I'll be along with you."
And she dusted the hearth and gathered up her cups and saucers, which, as she washed, Tim dried. And presently he was guiding her halting steps down the hill.
IV
At eight o'clock that night Tim was facing his audience, and a fine, large audience it was—not a hand's width in a single bench vacant; from the front row, where sat Buck Malone, almost smiling, to the back wall, where De Soto with some Indians and mailed companions was discovering the Mississippi—from stage to entrance, not a vacant seat. What hopes for a man in a fighting audience like that if he could but win them to him!
Tim was alone on the stage.
"Gentlemen," he began, "the Republican party in New Ireland seems to be very busy to-night. One-half of it has to attend a conference of bank cashiers over in Rocktown; and Rocktown, it appears, is four miles in a buggy over a rough road. That rough road and the buggy are, of course, an incontrovertible argument, gentlemen. And the other half has a rich prospective customer for a couple of town lots—also over in Rocktown. A busy little place that Rocktown must be! I don't wonder you're smiling. I smiled myself when they told me.
"But if they are not here, gentlemen, to accredit me, I am here to speak for myself. And, as you see, there is the table, the chair, the ice-water pitcher, the empty glass, all as"—he smiled down at the boss in the front row—"as Mr. Malone said it would be. 'Twas this very afternoon Mr. Malone spoke of it; and, myself happening to hear him, I would not for a lord lieutenant's income disappoint him. 'Twas my good old mother—God rest her soul!—who used to say—and many's the time she said it: 'Timmie dear, don't never disappoint people if you can help it.' And I never do—especially when it don't cost me anything; for water is the only thing I had to bring into the hall to-night—and water, gentlemen, is cheap."
"Yes, an' talk's cheap, too!"
Tim bowed to the voice and smiled with the laugh that followed.