Presently the Mayor, rising to greet a newcomer, noticed David. After a few moments he excused himself and took a chair at David's table. A silk vest that was a condensed flower garden made the mayoral front a gorgeous sight to behold.
There was a new respect in the Mayor's manner. "I see you're flyin' in high society these days," he began, in a whisper.
"You refer to Miss Chambers? She's merely interested in me as you are—in my reform." David said this quietly, as though the subject was closed.
His dignity was not lost on the Mayor. "Say, you've taken an all-fired brace to yourself in the last ten days, ain't you! As for your lady friend—well, if the way she was talkin' to you is the way reformers talk, gee I wish some one like her'd try to make a man out o' me! She's all right, friend. I've seen her before and I've heard a lot about her. But her old man—Lord, but I'd like to set for a week or so on his windpipe! Real estate is one o' his thousand lines, you know. He owns a lot o' tenements in this part o' town—none near St. Christopher's, o' course—and as a landlord, say, he's just partic'lar hell!"
"I've come to ask another favour of you," David cut in, quickly. "You've seen the boy that stays with me. I want to get him a job if I can. I thought possibly you might be able to help me."
"I've seen the kid, yes. Somethin' of a sleight o' hand performance, ain't he?—now he's there and now he ain't. Where'd you pick him up?"
"We just fell in with each other a couple of months ago. There's a man in him."
"I see. And you're trying to dig it out. You'll have to do a little blastin' on the job, don't you think? As for gettin' him work"—he shook his head slowly—"there's about five thousand families on Avenue A, and each family's got five boys, and about once in so often the street out there is blockaded with their mas beggin' me to get 'em jobs. There's how I'm fixed."
"You can't help me then?"
"You've sized it up. Sorry. Wish I could."