“May I come with you?”
“Ye may, an’ welcome. It’s a mighty pleasant thing to have a fri’ndly chat wid a man who has sinse enough to wear fine clo’es an’ talk like the aristocracy, an’ yet not be ashamed to be seen sp’akin’ to wan o’ my sort.”
“Will you think it rude if I inquire what you mean to do with those newspapers? Surely, at your age, you don’t sell them in the streets.”
“Faith, I’ll have to thry my hand at it now, an’ no mistake. Me grandson, Jimmy Maguire, was run over this afthernoon by an express van, an’ he’s up there at the hospital in West 16th Street. Jimmy is all that is left betune me an’ the wall, an’ I’m goin’ now to give in his returns. Mebbe the newspaper folk will let me hould his stand till the docthors sind him out.”
“And if they don’t?”
“Sure, sorr, God is good to the poor Irish.”
“I hope so, most sincerely. Still, a newspaper is a commercial enterprise, and the publisher may think you unequal to the job. What then?”
“Thin? I’d take a reef in me belt for breakfast, an’ spind a p’aceful hour in the cathaydral, that dhrame in shtone up there on Fifth Avenue. Don’t ye remimber that verse in the Psalms, ‘I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging bread.’ Manny’s the toime thim worrds have consoled me whin iverything looked black, an’ I was throubled wid quare thoughts, bein’ nigh famishin’ wid hunger.”
“Have you actually wanted food—here, in this great city?”
The old fellow laughed merrily. Evidently, he found the question humorous.