“Ah, yes,” replied Mason. “We received the notice late this afternoon. Tell Shannon to have it here the first thing in the morning.”
“Good enough!” The driver was about to turn away when Kerrigan exclaimed:
“Hello, Larry! What’s doing?”
“Hello, Johnnie,” greeted the other. “I didn’t know youse.”
“Who’s your friend?” questioned Kerrigan, nodding toward the receding form of the tramp.
“Oh, just a guy what braced me for a nickel so’s he could hang up his hat on the inside of a wall. He said it’s been so long since he covered his stilts wit’ a sheet that he forgets what it feels like.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him that I was workin’ this side o’ the street meself. Say, it’s a big t’ing when a guy kin dig down in his pants an’ produce a roll that would stop a window; but the minute I run up against a bundle o’ rags me vest buttons is in danger. Say, Johnnie, was youse ever strapped?”
Kerrigan confessed that he had been.
“I guess every geezer along the line has done the stunt at some stage o’ the game. Why, I’ve been so tight on the hooks that I couldn’t tell the difference between a coon blowin’ a cake walk an’ a gutter band handin’ out the ‘Dead March in Saul’; an’ if Queen Anne cottages was sellin’ for a quarter a bunch I couldn’t buy in a cellar window. I tell youse what it is, Kerrigan, when a guy’s room rent’s six weeks on the wrong side o’ the ledger an’ his meal ticket wont stan’ for another hole in it, it’s time for him to start somethin’ doin’, an’ try an’ git his eyes on a graft what’s got ‘In God we trust’ chalked on its back. Ain’t that right?”