that in honor of
the day we are going to celebrate you will give your friends an
exhibition of your skill at our entertainment next Saturday night?"

"Arrah, what the divil do you take me for? Is it a show actor you want
to make out of me, I dunno?"

"Oh, no, indeed, Mr. O'Hara!" replied Handy, in his most complaisant
manner of speech. "I would not undertake that job. But I thought on that
eventful occasion----"

"And," broke in McGowan, "if you do, it will make you solid with the
boys. You know they like you purty well as it is, but when they hear you
are going to take part in the anniversary entertainment you can have
anything you want from them."

"Are yez sayrious, I dunno, at all, at all?" inquired Myles, somewhat
dubiously.

"Am I?" responded McGowan. "Now, Myles, you know I have always had a
great regard for you, and do you think I'd speak as I have done unless I
was in earnest?"

O'Hara reflected a moment, then turning to McGowan, said: "Ed, look-a
here."

"Yes, Myles, what is it?"

"Bethune ourselves, an' on the level, what d'ye think the owld woman
would say?"

"Be tickled to death over it."

"An' the childer--what about thim?"

"They'd be no standin' 'em. Why, man alive, they'd be as proud as
peacocks."

"D'ye think so?"

"Think so, no; I know so, sure!"

"That settles it. Say, Mr. Handy,"--addressing the manager,--"have yez a
good fiddler that can play Irish chunes?"

At this juncture Weston took a hand in the discussion, and, with an
anxious desire to solve the musical problem, suggested: "We'll fix that
all right, all right, as we intend to have the Weston Philharmonic
Handel and Hayden Society--I think that's the name of the union--to
operate as an orchestra, and Herr Heintzleman, the leader, who is a
corking good fiddler, will play the dance music for you."

"Heintzleman!" repeated Myles, in apparent disgust. "No, sur! No
Heintzleman for mine. Not much! What! Have a Pennsylvania Dutchman play
an Irish jig for me? Arrah, what the divil are yez all dreamin' about?"

"Hold on, Myles, hold on! Don't get mad. Keep yer shirt on," interposed
McGowan, as a peacemaker. "Myles, you and Dinny Dempsey, the blind
piper, used to be good friends. Now, suppose we get Dinny. How will he
suit you?"

"Now yez are spakin' something like rayson, Ed McGowan. If Dinny Dimpsey
does the piping work, I'll do the dancin'."

"Is that a go, Myles?"

"There's me hand on it."

"Then Dempsey will be hire