n, a little profanity, great
incoherency,--but to his own relief.

"It's a mean thing it is, all of it," said he, "I'll be hanged but it
is! I dunno who the lady is; but we've made her cry bad, I know that;
and the boys acted like Nick. They knew that as well as I do. The man
there had to knock one of the fellows down, bedad, and served him right,
too. I say, the fellows fought, and hollared, and stole, and sure ye 'd
thought ye was driving pigs down the Eighth Avenue, and I was as bad as
the worst of 'em. That's what the boys did when a lady asked 'em to
Christmas."

"That was a mean thing to do," said Jerry, taking his pipe from his
mouth for a longer speech than he had ever been known to make while
smoking.

Mrs. Crehore stopped in her dish-wiping, sat down, and gave her opinion.
She did not know what a Christmas-tree was, having never seed one nor
heared of one. But she did know that those who went to see a lady should
show manners and behave like jintlemen, or not go at all. She expressed
her conviction that Tom Mulligan was rightly served, and her regret that
he had not two black eyes instead of one. She would have been glad,
indeed, if certain Floyds, and Sullivans, and Flahertys with whose
names of baptism she was better acquainted than I am, had shared a
similar fate.

This oration, and the oracle of his father still more, appeased Pat
somewhat; and when his supper was finished, after long silence, he said,
"We'll give her a Christmas present. We will. Tom Mulligan and Bill
Floyd and I will give it. The others sha'n't know. I know what we'll
give her. I'll tell Bill Floyd that we made her cry."

CHAPTER III.

After supper, accordingly, Pat Crehore repaired to certain rendezvous of
the younger life of the neighborhood, known to him, in search of Bill
Floyd. Bill was not at the first, nor at the second, there being indeed
no rule or principle known to men or even to archangels by which Bill's
presence at any particular spot at any particular time could be
definitely stated. But Bill also, in his proud free-will, obeyed certain
general laws; and accordingly Pat found him inspecting, as a volunteer
officer of police, the hauling out and oiling of certain hose at the
house of a neighboring hose company. "Come here, Bill. I got something
to show you."

Bill had already carried home and put in safe keeping a copy of
Routledge's "Robinson Crusoe," which had been given to him.

He left the hose inspection w