So that was the end of it. And because it was late in the afternoon, I thought I would telephone to the office that I was not coming back. But for the life of me, I could not think of my telephone number; and Henry looked me up in the directory.
XVII
THE CHILDREN THAT LEAD US
The mayor sat before his library fire and shivered, and kept wondering why there was no clause in the city charter prescribing a minimum of common sense for presidents of the Board of Education. A man thus qualified would know more than to suggest an increase of three million dollars for school sittings. The city's comptroller was crying bankruptcy; the newspapers were asserting that the mayor's nephew was head of a favoured contracting firm not entirely for his health; and the Board of Education wanted three million dollars. The mayor had a touch of fever. The steep rows of figures in the Education Board's memorandum curled up into little arabesques under his eyes, which were closing with fatigue. Only he did not wish to sleep. In the perfect stillness he could hear his own rapid heartbeat. The clatter of sleety rain against the windows made him restless.
If only O'Brien were here, O'Brien, who was a good chief of police, and a matchless personal aide-de-camp. They would then put on boots and oilskins and go out into the night on one of their frequent Harun-Al-Rashid expeditions. The mayor's wife? Yes, it is true that before leaving for the theatre she had cautioned him not to stir from the house. But she could not possibly have known how great was his need of a breath of air. But O'Brien was not here. Was it because he had just been appointed president of the Board of Education and comptroller in one and was a busy man? Perhaps. And yet a person might step to the telephone and ring up O'Brien if it were not that one's legs were weighted down with the weight of centuries and of dozens of new school buildings all in reinforced concrete. Was it concrete? The mayor was not quite sure, and he turned to ask O'Brien, who stood there at one side of the fireplace, erect and attentive.
"Do we go out to-night?" said the mayor.
"I should not advise it, your Honour," answered O'Brien. "You are not well enough. If it is adventure you would go in search of, I have here quite an extraordinary delegation of citizens who desire an interview with your Honour."
"Let us hear them, by all means," replied the mayor.
O'Brien drew aside the curtain which divided the library from the general reception room and there marched in, two abreast and maintaining precise step, a solemn line of children, who saluted the mayor gravely and ranged themselves in a semicircle across the room. As the mayor veered in his chair to face his visitors, a girl of some fifteen years stepped out of the line. She was still in her schoolgirl's dresses, but tall, with features of a fine, pensive cut and earnest eyes that were already peering from out the child's life into the opening doors of womanhood.