“Well, we shall see,” said Mrs. Lossing; “I think better things of Tommy. So does Harry.”
Part of the prophecy was to be speedily fulfilled. Two years later, the Honorable Thomas Fitzmaurice was elected mayor of his city, elected by the reform party, on account of his eminent services—and because he was the only man in sight who had the ghost of a chance of winning. Harry's version was: “Tommy jests at his new principles, but that is simply because he doesn't comprehend what they are. He laughs at reform in the abstract; but every concrete, practical reform he is as anxious as I or anybody to bring about. And he will get them here, too.”
He was as good as his word; he gave the city an admirable administration, with neither fear nor favor. Some of the “boys” still clung to him; these, according to Harry, were the better “boys,” who had the seeds of good in them and only needed opportunity and a leader. Tommy did not flag in zeal; rather, as the time went on and he soared out of the criminal courts into big civil cases involving property, he grew up to the level of his admirers' praises. “Tommy,” wrote Mr. Lossing, presently, “is beginning to take himself seriously. He has been told so often that he is a young lion of reform, that he begins to study the role in dead earnest. I don't talk this way to Harry, who believes in him and is training him for the representative for our district. What harm? Verily, his is the faith that will move mountains. Besides, Tommy is now rich; he must be worth a hundred thousand dollars, which makes a man of wealth in these parts. It is time for him to be respectable.”
Notwithstanding this preparation, Mrs. Carriswood (then giving Washington the benefit of her doubts of climate) was surprised one day to receive a perfectly correct visiting card whereon was engraved, “Mr. Thomas Sackville Fitzmaurice, M.C.”
The young lady who was with her lifted her brilliant hazel eyes and half smiled. “Is it the droll young man we met once at Mrs. Lossing's? Pray see him, Aunt Margaret,” said Miss Van Harlem.
Mrs. Carriswood shrugged her shoulders and ordered the man to show him up.
There entered, in the wake of the butler, a distinguished-looking personage who held out his hand with a perfect copy of the bow that she saw forty times a day. “He is taking himself very seriously,” she sighed; “he is precisely like anybody else!” And she felt her interest snuffed out by Tommy's correctness. But, directly, she changed her mind; the unfailing charm of his race asserted itself in Tommy; she decided that he was a delightful, original young man, and in ten minutes they were talking in the same odd confidence that had always marked their relation.
“How perfectly you are gotten up! Are you INSIDE, now?”
“Ah, do you remember that?” said he; “that's awfully good of you. Which is so fortunate as to please you, my clothes or my deportment?”
“Both. They are very good. Where did you get them, Tommy? I shall take the privilege of my age and call you Tommy.”