"Mr. Cuttin', sor," I heard in a husky, happy, excited whisper; "are you busy, sor?" Mr. Cutting looked up from his desk and called out in his brusque, pleasant way:
"Hello! That you, Michael? Not too busy to see you. Come right in." Then followed the real entrance; for what I have thus far described might better be called "an appearance," to again use the vernacular of the stage. With hurried, tender steps, O'Connor almost danced across the room to where Mr. Cutting was seated. His face was completely covered with one expansive smile of radiant happiness, and, as if to even emphasize this, when he had reached his short journey's end, he upraised both his hands, the right one still grasping the royal headgear, and exclaimed in tones of awe at his own joy:
"Oh my, oh my, oh my! Shure, Mr. Cuttin', you should see him!"
"Who?" replied Mr. Cutting, laconically, and with careful indifference to grammar.
"The little felly. Mollie, me daughter, that is now Mrs. Fennessey, do be afther havin' a fine boy. Ah-h! He is a marvil."
"And how is Mollie?" asked Mr. Cutting.
"Shure Mollie's well. She is a fine, strong girl." O'Connor dismissed the interpolation with a kindly wave of the hand and immediately returned to the main proposition. "But the little felly!" At this point he so far forgot himself as to pull his chair close to Mr. Cutting's and to place one of his honest hands on that gentleman's knee. Mr. Cutting quietly allowed his own to rest for a moment upon that of his old friend, and said:
"Tell me all about him, Mike."
In response to this invitation, O'Connor gave his enthusiasm, and his narrative and descriptive powers full rein. "Well, Mr. Cuttin', sor," he began, with manifest determination to do the subject full justice; "as I said before, he is a marvil. Listen, now; yister' mawnin' I wint, as is me custom, to see Mollie an' the little felly."
Here Mr. Cutting, with gentle malice aforethought, again checked the flow, as he gravely winked at me, aside. "By the way, how is Tim Fennessey?" he asked.