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“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 willingly, and hurried along with Pat, past many attractive groups, not even stopping where a brewer’s horse had fallen on the ground, till Pat brought him in triumph to the gaudy window of a shoe-shop, lighted up gayly and full of the wares by which even shoe-shops lure in customers for Christmas.

“See there!” said Pat, nearly breathless. And he pointed to the very centre of the display, a pair of slippers made from bronze-gilt kid, and displaying a hideous blue silk bow upon the gilding. For what class of dancers or of maskers these slippers may have been made, or by what canon of beauty, I know not. Only they were the centre of decoration in the shoe-shop window. Pat looked at them with admiration, as he had often done, and said again to Bill Floyd, “See there, ain’t them handsome?”

“Golly!” said Bill, “I guess so.”

“Bill, let’s buy them little shoes, and give ’em to her.”

“Give ’em to who?” said Bill, from whose mind the Christmas-tree had for the moment faded, under the rivalry of the hose company, the brewer’s horse, and the shop window. “Give ’em to who?”

“Why, her, I don’t know who she is. The gal that made the what-do-ye-call-it, the tree, you know, and give us the oranges, where old Purdy was. I say, Bill, it was a mean dirty shame to make such a row there, when we was bid to a party; and I want to make the gal a present, for I see her crying, Bill. Crying cos it was such a row.” Again, I omit certain profane expressions which did not add any real energy to the declaration.

“They is handsome,” said Bill, meditatingly. “Ain’t the blue ones handsomest?”

“No,” said Pat, who saw he had gained his lodgment, and that the carrying his point was now only a matter of time. “The gould ones is the ones for me. We’ll give ’em to the gal for a Christmas present, you and I and Tom Mulligan.”