Tom Grogan | Page 8

"or I'll bu'st yer jaw, ye sneakin' rat!"

Cully came out, but not in obedience to McGaw or Lathers. Indeed, he
paid no more attention to either of those distinguished diplomats than if
they had been two cement-barrels standing on end. His face, too, had
lost its irradiating smile; not a wrinkle or a pucker ruffled its calm
surface. His clay-soiled hat was in his hand--a very dirty hand, by the
way, with the torn cuff of his shirt hanging loosely over it. His trousers
bagged everywhere--at knees, seat, and waist. On his stockingless feet
were a pair of sun-baked, brick-colored shoes. His ankles were as dark
as mahogany. His throat and chest were bare, the skin tanned to leather
wherever the sun could work its way through the holes in his garments.
From out of this combination of dust and rags shone a pair of piercing
black eyes, snapping with fun.
"I come up fer de mont's pay," he said coolly to Babcock, the corner of
his eye glued to Lathers. "De ole woman said ye'd hev it ready."
"Mrs. Grogan's?" asked the bookkeeper, shuffling over his envelopes.
"Yep. Tom Grogan."
"Can you sign the pay-roll?"
"You bet"--with an eye still out for Lathers.
"Where did you learn to write--at school?" asked Babcock, noting the
boy's independence with undisguised pleasure.
"Naw. Patsy an' me studies nights. Pop Mullins teaches us--he's de ole
woman's farder what she brung out from Ireland. He's a-livin' up ter de
shebang; dey're all a-livin' dere--Jinnie an' de ole woman an' Patsy--all
'cept me an' Carl. I bunks in wid de Big Gray. Say, mister, ye'd oughter
git onter Patsy--he's de little kid wid de crutch. He's a corker, he is;
reads po'try an' everythin'. Where'll I sign? Oh, I see; in dis'ere square
hole right along-side de ole woman's name"--spreading his elbows, pen
in hand, and affixing "James Finnegan" to the collection of autographs.
The next moment he was running along the dock, the money envelope
tight in his hand, sticking out his tongue at McGaw, and calling to
Lathers as he disappeared through the door in the fence, "Somp'n wid a

mustache, somp'n wid a mustache," like a news-boy calling an extra.
Then a stone grazed Lathers's ear.
Lathers sprang through the gate, but the boy was half way through the
yard. It was this flea-like alertness that always saved Mr. Finnegan's
scalp.
Once out of Lathers's reach, Cully bounded up the road like a careering
letter X, with arms and legs in air. If there was any one thing that
delighted the boy's soul, it was, to quote from his own picturesque
vocabulary, "to set up a job on de ole woman." Here was his chance.
Before he reached the stable he had planned the whole scene, even to
the exact intonation of Lathers's voice when he referred to the dearth of
mustaches in the Grogan household. Within a few minutes of his arrival
the details of the whole occurrence, word for word, with such
picturesque additions as his own fertile imagination could invent, were
common talk about the yard.
Lathers meanwhile had been called upon to direct a gang of laborers
who were moving an enormous iron buoy-float down the
cinder-covered path to the dock. Two of the men walked beside the
buoy, steadying it with their hands. Lathers was leaning against the
board fence of the shop whittling a stick, while the others worked.
Suddenly there was an angry cry for Lathers, and every man stood still.
So did the buoy and the moving truck.
With head up, eyes blazing, her silk hood pushed back from her face, as
if to give her air, her gray ulster open to her waist, her right hand bare
of a glove, came Tom Grogan, brushing the men out of her way.
"I knew I'd find you, Pete Lathers," she said, facing him squarely; "why
do ye want to be takin' the bread out of me children's mouths?"
The stick dropped from Lathers's hand: "Well, who said I did? What
have I got to do with your"--
"You've got enough to do with 'em, you and your friend McGaw, to

want 'em to starve. Have I ever hurt ye that ye should try an' sneak me
business away from me? Ye know very well the fight I've made,
standin' out on this dock, many a day an' night, in the cold an' wet, with
nothin' between Tom's children an' the street but these two hands--an'
yet ye'd slink in like a dog to get me"--
"Here, now, I ain't a-goin' to have no row," said Lathers, twitching his
shoulders. "It's against orders, an' I'll call the yard-watch, and throw
you out if you make any fuss."
"The yard-watch!" said Tom, with a look of supreme contempt. "I