All-Wool Morrison | Page 3

swill contract with the city and came in
every other day with a grunt of fresh complaint. There were the usual
new faces, but Mac Tavish understood perfectly well that they were
there to bother a mayor, not to help the woolen-goods business. There

was old Hon. Calvin Dow, a pensioner of David Morrison, now passed
on to the considerately befriending Stewart, and Mac Tavish was
deeply disgusted with a man who was so impractical in his business
affairs that, though he had been financially busted for ten years, he still
kept along in the bland belief, based on Stewart's assurances, that
money was due him from the Morrisons. Whenever Mac Tavish went
to the safe, obeying Stewart's word, he expressed sotto voce the wish
that he might be able to drop into the Hon. Calvin Dow's palm red-hot
coins from the nippers of a pair of tongs. It was not that Mac Tavish
lacked the spirit of charity, but that he wanted every man to know to
the full the grand and noble goodness of the Morrisons, and be properly
grateful, as he himself was. Dow's complacency in his hallucination
was exasperating!
But there was no one in sight that morning who promised the diversion
or the effrontery that would make this the day of days, and there
seemed to be no excuse that would furnish the occasion for the
battle-cry which would end all this pestiferous series of levees.
The muffled rackelty-chackle of the distant looms soothed Mac Tavish.
The nearer rick-tack of Miss Delora Bunker's typewriter furnished
obbligato for the chorus of the looms. It was all good music for a
business man. But those muttering, mumbling mayor-chasers--it was a
tin-can, cow-bell discord in a symphony concert.
Mac Tavish, honoring the combat code of Caledonia, required
presumption to excuse attack, needed an upthrust head to justify a
whack.
Patrolman Cornelius Rellihan, six feet two, was lofty enough. He
marched to and fro beyond the rail, his heavy shoes flailing down on
the hardwood floor. Every morning the bang of those boots started the
old pains to thrusting in Mac Tavish's neck. But Officer Rellihan was
the mayor's major-domo, officially, and Stewart's pet and protégé and
worshiping vassal in ordinary. An intruding elephant might be evicted;
Rellihan could not even receive the tap of a single word of
remonstrance.

It promised only another day like the others, with nothing that hinted at
a climacteric which would make the affairs of the mill office of the
Morrisons either better or worse.
Then Col. Crockett Shaw marched in, wearing a plug-hat to mark the
occasion as especial and official, but taking no chances on the dangers
of that unwonted regalia in frosty January; he had ear-tabs close
clamped to the sides of his head.
Mac Tavish took heart. He hated a plug-hat. He disliked Col. Crockett
Shaw, for Shaw was a man who employed politics as a business.
Colonel Shaw was carrying his shoulders well back and seemed to be
taller than usual, his new air of pomposity making him a head thrust
above the horde. Colonel Shaw offensively banged the door behind
himself. Mac Tavish removed a package of time-sheets that covered a
pile of paper-weights. Colonel Shaw came stamping across the room,
clapping his gloved hands together, as if he were as cold under the
frosty eyes of Mac Tavish as he had been in the nip of the January chill
outdoors.
"Mayor Morrison! Call him at once!" he commanded, at the wicket.
Mac Tavish closed his hand over one of the paper-weights. He opened
his mouth.
But Colonel Shaw was ahead of him with speech! "This is the time
when that fool mill-rule goes bump!" The colonel's triumphant tone
hinted that he had been waiting for a time like this. His entrance and his
voice of authority took all the attention of the other waiters off their
own affairs. "Call out Mayor Morrison."
"Haud yer havers, ye keckling loon! Whaur's yer een for the tickit
gillie?" The old paymaster jabbed indignant thumb over his shoulder to
indicate the big clock on the wall.
"I can't hear what you say on account of these ear-pads, and it doesn't
make any difference what you say, Andy! This is the day when all rules
are off." He was fully conscious that he had the ears of all those in the

room. He braced back. With an air of a functionary calling on the
multitude to make way for royalty he declaimed, "Call His Honor
Mayor Morrison at once to this room for a conference with the
Honorable Jodrey Wadsworth Corson, United States Senator. I am here
to announce that Senator Corson is on the way."
Mac Tavish narrowed his eyes; he whittled his tone to a fine point to
correspond, and the general