“Can't help it,” said the Consul, grinning. “I've done all I could. He'll get into trouble likely. What can I do, if he wants to run his risk and stand by his luck?”
“I'll denounce you at home for inefficiency.”
“Pleasant dreams!” he said. “It 'll be a hot night;” and with that he went off grinning.
The afternoon wore away slowly. I began to think the Mayor might have me down after all, and wondered if Chepa would run the plant that night with a detachment of pink soldiery over him. I sent a guard after some lunch. No one else came except my lawyer, who brought some newspapers, and said the Mayor was blushing all over with happiness and conceit. He said there were crowds in the Plaza, and sure enough you could hear the mutter and shuffle of them, for the Plaza was but a few blocks away. It seemed to me they were making more noise than before, and when the lawyer was gone, and the afternoon was late, it seemed to have grown to a kind of dull roaring, with shouts and howls intermixed. The peons in the patio were stirring about, too, and jabbering. The dusk was coming on faintly.
CHAPTER XXV--MRS. ULSWATER'S INSURRECTION
|THERE was a clatter and tramp of feet in the street outside. The door of the patio flew open with a bang.
“Take your dirty hands off me!” Bang, went the door again, and there in the patio stood a little squat Irishman with red hair and stubby black clay pipe in his mouth.
“What's the matter?” I called to him, for his hair was rumpled and his coat torn, with rough handling. He ran to me, and the crowd, the simple-hearted criminality of Portate, gathered around us.
“Hoosh!” he said. “It's an insurrection, sor. I'm arristed for distributin' insidjus proclamations in backwoods Casthilian, an' the guards has taken me last copy, tellin' how The Mayor has Tyrannously Arristed the Electric Lights! Release Misther Kirby or Down wid the Mayor! Shall Portate be Darkened? Citizens, Rise!' Oh, hivens, me entherprise and adventures!”
“Comb down your red hair,” I said, “and go on.”
“It's fine shade of gold, you Hibernian Apollo! Who in time are you?”
“I come in yesterday evenin' on the _Violetta_”
“Yes, sor. Me name's Hagan, but Sadler's gone away from me, an' I have the trimbles in me bones.”