"Well, I'll compromise with you," said
Thaddeus. "We won't wait until to-morrow. I'll decide the question to-night—I'm really too busy now to think of them."
"I shall be glad when we don't have to think about 'em at all," sighed Mrs. Perkins, pouring out the candidate's coffee. "They've really been a care to me. I don't like the idea of putting them on the porch, or on the gate-posts either. They'll have to be kept clean, and goodness knows I can't ask the girls to go out in the middle of winter to clean them if they are on the gate-posts."
"Mike will clean them," said Thaddeus.
Mrs. Perkins sniffed when Mike's name was mentioned. "I doubt it," she said. "He's been lots of good for two weeks."
"Mike has been lots of good for two weeks," echoed Thaddeus, enthusiastically. "He's kept all the hired men in line, my dear."
"I've no doubt he's been of use politically, but from a domestic point of view he's been awful. He's been drunk for the last week."
"Well, my love," said the candidate, despairingly, "some member of the family had to be drunk for the last week, and I'd rather it was Mike than you or any of the children. Mike's geniality has shed a radiance about me among the hired men of this town that fills me with pride."
"I don't see, to go back to what I said in the very beginning, why we can't have the lamps in-doors," returned Mrs. Perkins.
"I told you why not, my dear," said Perkins. "They are the perquisite of the Mayor, but for the benefit of the public, because the public pays for them."