Part of the prophecy was to be speedily fulfilled. Two years later, the
Honorable Thomas Fitzmaurice was elected mayor of his city, elected by
the reform party, on account of his eminent services--and because he was
the only man in sight who had the ghost of a chance of winning. Harry's
version was: "Tommy jests at his new principles, but that is simply
because he doesn't comprehend what they are. He laughs at reform in the
abstract; but every concrete, practical reform he is as anxious as I or
anybody to bring about. And he will get them here, too."

He was as good as his word; he gave the city an admirable
administration, with neither fear nor favor. Some of the "boys" still
clung to him; these, according to Harry, were the better "boys," who
had the seeds of good in them and only needed opportunity and a leader.
Tommy did not flag in zeal; rather, as the time went on and he soared
out of the criminal courts into big civil cases involving property,
he grew up to the level of his admirers' praises. "Tommy," wrote Mr.
Lossing, presently, "is beginning to take himself seriously. He has been
told so often that he is a young lion of reform, that he begins to study
the role in dead earnest. I don't talk this way to Harry, who believes
in him and is training him for the representative for our district. What
harm? Verily, his is the faith that will move mountains. Besides, Tommy
is now rich; he must be worth a hundred thousand dollars, which makes a
man of wealth in these parts. It is time for him to be respectable."

Notwithstanding this preparation, Mrs. Carriswood (then giving
Washington the benefit of her doubts of climate) was surprised one day
to receive a perfectly correct visiting card whereon was engraved, "Mr.
Thomas Sackville Fitzmaurice, M.C."

The young lady who was with her lifted her brilliant hazel eyes and half
smiled. "Is it the droll young man we met once at Mrs. Lossing's? Pray
see him, Aunt Margaret," said Miss Van Harlem.

Mrs. Carriswood shrugged her shoulders and ordered the man to show him
up.

There entered, in the wake of the butler, a distinguished-looking
personage who held out his hand with a perfect copy of the bow that
she saw forty times a day. "He is taking himself very seriously," she
sighed; "he is precisely like anybody else!" And she felt her interest
snuffed out by Tommy's correctness. But, directly, she changed her mind;
the unfailing charm of his race asserted itself in Tommy; s