“Yes, it’s I, Tommy, my boy,” said Waddy, almost ready to dance himself and feeling, suddenly, quite a boy again. “I would bet cash that I can tell what you have in your right-hand pocket.”
“Well, you’re right,” admitted Tootler, smiling blandly; and diving into his pocket, he produced the joints of a flute. He put it rapidly together and after one howl, such as Ira had heard from without, he played in a masterly way a few bars of a sweet Spanish air.
“Our last serenade—eh, Ira? I don’t forget, you see.”
The two friends shook hands again on this souvenir—but more gravely. Mr. Waddy’s face, indeed, was again very grave.
“Fifteen years ago this very month,” continued Tootler, a little rapidly, perhaps noticing the change. “But, Ira, you’ve not altered a hair, except your moustache, and you’re as brown as a chowder party. Splendid! All right! Welcome home! as the boy said to the bumble-bee. If I could see your lips, I don’t know but I would——” A chirping smack went off in the air, and Tommy, the gay, spun about his office, and as he spun he flirted no less than three tears to lay the dust; then, giving himself a little thwack in the eyes, he fronted Waddy again.
“Well, Tommy,” said his friend, “you are the same—only younger. I see the hair hasn’t grown yet on your infantile poll.”
“Never will, sir,” replied the merry man, who had plenty of pleasant light hair below his tonsure; “never would. I’m taken for a priest, a nunshow. Sometimes for the Pope. Isn’t that worth being bald for? ‘The Pope that Pagan full of pride’—I’d like to be him for one day to excommunicate the Irish nation. But come! tell me about yourself. I obeyed orders and didn’t write. I heard, of course, through your house here that you were alive and making money, but nothing more. We’ve talked very often of you—Cissy and I.”
“Oh!” said Waddy, “of course there’s a Cissy. No man ever looked so young and happy without.”
“Of course,” assented Tootler positively, “there’s more than one. There’s Mrs. Cecilia Tootler, who knows you very well by hearsay, and Miss Cecilia Tootler, who will know you this afternoon, if my brown mare Cecilia doesn’t break our necks.”
“Where are we going so fast?” asked Waddy, “with these gay young men who drive brown mares?”