A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill

								

city politicians has got their own way of running streets; they take a
pencil you see and draw a line along the property of folks that can pay
for streets. The balance of us sets in mud puddles.” The man evidently
found some difficulty in expressing himself without the assistance of
profanity. There were blanks left between the words, which he supplied
mentally with compressed lips and lifting of shaggy brows, that served
as an effective substitute. His conversation printed would resemble
these grammatical exercises, struggled with an early youth, in which
“a----dog----attacked a----boy with a----stick.”
But his suppressed eloquence was lost upon his hearer, for Donald
had become absorbed in a theatrical poster, which represented a
preternaturally slim young lady, poised on a champagne bottle, coyly
surveying an admiring world through the extended fingers of a small
black gloved hand. It was “La Florine,” whose charms he had heard
recounted times without number by Mr. Cropsie Decker.
This evening, the poster announced, “La Florine” would for the first
time in any American city, perform her incomparable dance, “The Serpent
of the Nile.”
Don had consulted his watch, and made a lightning calculation as to the
time in which he could get a bite of supper and reach the Gayety, before
he remembered that he was a reformed character. Then he sternly withdrew
his gaze from the lady who peeped through her fingers in the dusk,
and brought it back to the red-headed person, who had continued his
conversation with unbroken volubility.
“... and she says to me,” he was concluding “'Mr. Flathers,' she says,
'it's a privelege to help such as you. A man what's been in the gutter
times without number, and bore the awful horrors of delirium tremins
four times and still can feel the stirrings of Christianity in his
bosom.'”
Donald looked at him and laughed. Here was evidently a fellow sinner.
“So you've straightened up, have you? How does it feel?”
Mr. Flathers cast a sidelong glance upward as if to size up the handsome
young gentleman on horseback.
“Mighty depressin',” he confessed, “with a thirst that's been
accumulatin' for weeks and weeks, and a sick wife, and a adobted child
that ain't spoke a word for seven years. But I'm restin' on the Lord. He
well pervide.”
“Oh, you'll get along!” said Don, feeling uncommonly lenient toward his
fellow men. “Here's a dollar if that will help you out a bit.”
“It will,” said Mr. Flathers reassuringly; “it undoubtedly will. I got
much to be thankful for, I know that. Fer instance I never was a poor
relation! That's more than lots of men kin say! The fact are, there
ain't airy one in my whole family connection what's got any more 'n I
have!”
The shower that had been threatening began now in earnest, and Donald
started toward town at a brisk canter, but before he had gone two
squares the rain was driving in sheets across the street, and he was