“Certainly.”
“Well! Well! Belike it’s a fine job. I dunno. Five dollars a day, ye say, to begin with?”
“Yis, five a day.”
“Well, a man in my line could git no more than that, eh? It wouldn’t hurt me fer once, fer a little while anyway, hey?”
“It would be the makin’ av ye.”
“Well, I’ll be with ye. Yis, I’ll be with ye. It’s not five I can git everywhere. When is it ye’ll be wantin’ me?”
The foreman, a Gargantuan figure in yellow jeans and high rubber boots smeared to the buttocks with mud, eyed him genially and amiably, the while McGlathery surveyed his superior with a kind of reverence and awe, a reverence which he scarcely felt for any other man, unless perchance it might be his parish priest, for he was a good Catholic, or the political backer of his district, through whom he had secured his job. What great men they all were, to be sure, leading figures in his life.
So here he was on this particular morning shortly after the work had been begun, and here was the river, and down below in this new shaft, somewhere, was Thomas Cavanaugh, to whom he had to report before he could go to work.
“Sure, it’s no colleen’s job,” he observed to a fellow worker who had arrived at the mouth of the shaft about the same time as himself, and was beginning to let himself down the ladder which sank darkly to an intermediate platform, below which again was another ladder and platform, and below that a yellow light. “Ye say Mr. Cavanaugh is below there?”
“He is,” replied the stranger without looking up. “Ye’ll find him inside the second lock. Arr ye workin’ here?”