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Bertha went with her fiance to select the home that was to be theirs. They found a clean, tidy, furnished room, with a canary bird thrown in, and Toby, in the wild joy of his heart, seized his sweetheart round the waist and tried to force her to dance under the amazed eyes of the landlady.

“You yoost behafed awful!” exclaimed the blushing waitress that evening, with tears of laughter at the remembrance.

She was as happy as her lover, except for two small worries that she had: she feared that her uncle, Louie Gratz, with whom she lived, or one of her few friends, might, when they found she was to marry Toby, allude to him as a “Dago,” in which case she had an intuition that he would slap the offender; and she was afraid of the smallpox, which had caused the quarantine of two shanties not far from her uncle’s house. The former of her fears she did not mention, but the latter she spoke of frequently, telling Pietro how Gratz was panic-stricken, and talked of moving, and how glad she was that Toby’s “gran’ palazzo” was in another quarter of the city, as he had led her to believe. Laughing her humours almost away, he told her that the red and green lanterns, threatening murkily down the street, were for only wicked ones, like that Meesa Peaslay, for whom she discovered, Pietro’s admiration had diminished. And when she thought of the new home–far across the city from the ugly flags and lanterns–the tiny room with its engraving of the “Rock of Ages” and its canary, she forgot both her troubles entirely; for now, at last, the marvellous fact was assured: the five hundred dollars was pinned into the waistcoat pocket, lying upon Pietro’s heart day and night, the precious lump that meant to him Bertha and a home. The good Republican set election-day for the happiest holiday of his life, for that would be his wedding-day.

He left her at her own gate, the evening before that glorious day, and sang his way down the street, feeling that he floated on the airy uplift of his own barcarole beneath sapphire skies, for Bertha had put her arms about him at last.

“Toby,” she said, “lieber Toby, I am so all-lofing by you–you are sitch a good maan–I am so–so–I am yoost all-lofing by you!” And she cried heartily upon his shoulder. “Toby, uf you ain’d here for me to-morrow by eckseckly dwelf o’glock, uf you are von minutes late, I’m goin’ yoost fall down deat! Don’ you led nothings happen mit you, Toby.”

And she had whispered to him, in love with his old tender mockery of her, to sing “Libra Ogostine” for her before he said good-night.

Mr. Pixley, again seated upon the barrel which he had used for his interview with Toby, beheld the transfigured face of the young man as the chestnut vender passed the mouth of the alley, and the committee-man released from his soul a burdening profanity in the ear of his companion and confidant, a policeman who would be on duty in Pixley’s precinct on the morrow, and who had now reported for instructions not necessarily received in a too public rendezvous.

“After I talked to him out here on this very barrel,” said Pixley, his anathema concluded, “I raised the bid on him; yessir, you kin skin me fer a dead skunk if I didn’t offer him ten dollars and a box of cigars fer the bunch; and him jest settin’ there laughin’ like a plumb fool and tellin’ me I didn’t need to worry, they’d all vote Republican fer nothin’! Talked like a parrot: ‘Vote a Republican! Republican eternal!’ Republican! Faugh, he don’t know no more why he’s a Republican than a yeller dog’d know! I went around to-night, when he was out, thought mebbe I could fix it up with the others. No, sir! Couldn’t git nothing out of ’em except some more parrot-cackle: ‘Vote same Petro. All a good Republican!’ It’s enough to sicken a man!”