“Barkeeper,” remarked Kelly after a glance about, “me friends here are doin’ nawthin’.” He stripped a note from the bundle and threw it upon the sloppy bar. “Work that out,” requested he, “an’ tell me when it’s done. There’s more to folly, for I’m out for a good toime the noight.”
“There’s a good t’ing!” exclaimed Nobby Foley. “He’s a blood, d’ye hear—a blood! He treats youse right, see?”
“Gintlemen,” affirmed the object of these remarks, “I haven’t a mane bone in me body, an’ the man that do be after callin’ James Kelly a friend, is welcome till share his last dollar. Iv any av yez gits pinched does yez friends have till ax me twice till go yez bail? Be hivens!” excitedly, “there ain’t a magistrate in the city, Raypublican or Dimmycrat, that’ed kape yez in the jug a minyute after I wint forninst him and told him till lave ye go.”
The enthusiasm that greeted this statement shook the walls. Daily, Foley, and a select circle of kindred spirits added no little volume to it. They rapturously patted the speaker on the back and beat the bar with their glasses, for each had a five dollar note tucked snugly away in his pocket and felt in duty bound to stir up the promised amount of enthusiasm. The outburst elated the selectman; his voice was husky with drink, but he climbed upon a chair and plunged into a speech.
“The fellys that are again’ me,” declared he, “say that I am not a Dimmycrat, an’ would have yez vote to bate me. But whin the day comes I’ll show thim what the people of the ward t’ink, because the dillygates’ll be there that’ll name me in spoite av thim!”
He forgot his protestation of a few minutes before that he was out for a good time, and proceeded to make a bid for his hearers’ support at the primaries; Daily and his henchmen were punctuating his remarks by salvos of applause, when Laughlin summoned the orator into the entry.
“Hello, Phil,” Kelly greeted the sergeant, “sure an’ it’s glad till see yez I am; but divil take ye, cud yez not wait till I got through! I had ’em jist where I wanted thim; I wur makin’ votes by the dozen.”
“It’s a slashin’ good game for you,” grumbled the sergeant; “but look at my end of it! You load ’em up with booze—they’ll fight—my men’ll pull ’em, an’ I’ll have to hold ’em till Moran kin give’m a hearin’ in the mornin’. Then what? There’s lots of fellows from my division here, an’ I must carry that division, Kelly, I must carry it, or lose me job; that’s just how I stand. An’ if I put me people away in the cooler how am I goin’ to do any carryin’, eh?”
“Tut, tut, man dear, I must make meself solid wid the gang av young fellys. Sure a drop av drink’ll do thim no harm, Phil; it’ll make thim feel good, that’s all.”
The uproar raised by Daily and his friends and Kelly’s display of ready money had captured both the rowdy and the frothy elements. But the popular young men—the members of the club for example—held aloof; and it was these that Kelly was working for.