YOU fool!" remarked former Alderman Goldberg to his man, Mulligan, when he learned a little later that night of the spirited occurrence in his bar room. "You fool! Don't you know no better than to put it onto a newspaper guy? Don't you know he can make all kinds of trouble for us if he wants to? Don't you know nothin'? Just because he did up a pal of yours,—and God knows he had it comin' to him!—is that any reason you've got to pitch into the bloke and set a lot of bees stingin' us? You're a bright one, ain't you? You're a rotten stiff!" fulminated Goldberg, while his assistant scowled and said nothing. "I'll tell you one thing," concluded Goldberg, "if they make any trouble for me out of your fool break, you get the run, see?"
But no trouble ensued and Mulligan remained. Micky, having come out ahead, laughed at his rough treatment as a part of a good joke, being no whiner. There was no disposition at the Courier office to cause Goldberg any more trouble than it was hoped was due him after the next election, along with his mates. All the Courier's hopes were centered on that pleasing goal.
Micky's night off, a little later in the week, fell uneventfully, and it was with distinct boredom that he tried to kill time. He was invariably uneasy at these brief intervals of respite from the grind, and it might be said that he enjoyed himself in discontent. It was with a generally ennuied air that he sauntered at midnight into a night lunch room much frequented by the Courier staff and encountered Dick there, whom he greeted with enthusiasm. It happened that Dick was through especially early that evening.
An odd friendship had arisen between these two, so dissimilar and yet so like in the welding quality of good fellowship and thorough bohemianism. It was this restless spirit, the arch-enemy of commercial routine, that had drawn Dick into journalism after leaving college. The step was a disappointment to his father, who had hoped that Dick would elect to enter the parent's office and learn the business from the ground up. He did not oppose Dick's inclinations, however, thinking that a little experience would weary him of his idea. Thus far, however, there seemed little likelihood that Dick would leave the fascinating grind for the more substantial though more prosaic office desk. He had taken naturally to journalism, was a ready and pleasing writer, and he liked it.
It was the same restless spirit, too, linked with an inborn, luring love of roving and shift of scene, that fired O'Byrn. A happy vagabond, his eyes were filled ever with the charm of new scenes that all too soon grew old. Always were fair mirages to glow on his horizon, bringing him hurrying on—to find them faded. Dream-houses, built on barren sands, dissolving in mists of tears as the years spell the bitter, brutal thing that we call wisdom! Always for him, strange little Irishman, the luring whisper from afar and the mad dash thither, to find as before only chill mists and brooding shadows; and so on, over the wastes, to silence and the end.
"What have you done with yourself?" inquired Dick, as the two settled themselves comfortably before their sandwiches and coffee. "Find anything worth while?"
"Oh, early in the evenin' I dropped into Ryan's roof garden," replied Micky. "The first stunt wasn't so bad; then they rang in one of those cockney carolers from dear ol' Lunnon. He got off a yowl about—
"'Wipe no more, my lidy,
Oh, wipe no more to die—'
and I got out. Suggested a scullery strike and business, and it was my night off.