The Complete Works. O. Henry

boss, and people and fun. Sometimes they laugh right out loud. Out-of-town visitors mostly visit our restaurants.’

      “‘Get away,’ says I, ‘I’m beginnin’ to think your old Tenderloin is nothin’ but the butcher’s article. A little spice and infamy and audible riot is what I am after. If you can’t furnish it go back and climb on your demi-barouche. We have restaurants out West,’ I tells him, ‘where we eat grub attended by artificial light and laughter. Where is the boasted badness of your unjustly vituperated city?’

      “The fellow rubs his chin again. ‘Deed if I know, boss,’ says he, ‘right now. You see Jerome’ — and then he buds out with another idea. ‘Tell you what,’ says he, ‘be the very thing! You jump in my keb and I’ll drive you over to Brooklyn. My aunt’s giving a euchre party tonight,’ says he, ‘because Miles O’Reilly is busy, watchin’ the natatorium — somebody tipped him off it was a poolroom. Can you play euchre? The keb’ll be $3.50 an hour. Jump right in, boss.’

      “That was the best I could do on the wickedest corner in New York. So I walks over where it’s more righteous, hopin’ there might be somethin’ doin’ among the Pharisees. Everything, so far as I could see, was as free from guile as a hammock at a Chautauqua picnic. The people just walked up and down, speakin’ of chrysanthemum shows and oratorios, and enjoyin’ the misbegotten reputation of bein’ the wickedest rakes on the continent.”

      “It’s too bad, Bill.” I said, “that you were disappointed in the Tenderloin. Didn’t you have a chance to spend any of your money?”

      “Oh, yes,” said Bill. “I managed to drop one dollar over on the edge of the sinful district. I was goin’ along down a boulevard when I hears an awful hollerin’ and fussin’ that sounded good — it reminded me of a real enjoyable roughhouse out West. Some fellow was quarrelin’ at the top of his voice, usin’ cuss words, and callin’ down all kinds of damnation about somethin’.

      “The sounds come out through a big door in a high buildin’ and I went in to see the fun. Thinks I, I’ll get a small slice of this here Tenderloin anyhow. Well, I went in, and that’s where I dropped the dollar. They came around and collected it.”

      “What was inside, Bill?” I asked.

      “A fellow told me, when we come out,” said Bill, “it was a church, and one of these preachers that mixes up in politics was denouncin’ the evils of the Tenderloin.”

The Struggle Of The Outliers

       Table of Contents

      Again, to-day, at a certain street, on the ragged boundaries of the city, Lawrence Holcombe stopped the trolley car and got off. Holcombe was a handsome, prosperous business man of forty; a man of high social standing and connections. His comfortable suburban residence was some five miles farther out on the car line from the street where so often of late he had dropped off the outgoing car.

      The conductor winked at a regular passenger, and nodded his head archly in the direction of Holcombe’s hurrying figure.

      “Getting to be a regular thing,” commented the conductor.

      Holcombe picked his way gingerly down a roughly graded side street infested with ragged urchins and impeded by abandoned tinware. He stopped at a small cottage fenced in with a patch of stony ground with a few stunted shade-trees growing about it. A stout, middle-aged woman was washing clothes in a tub at one side of the door. She looked around, and smiled a smile of fat recognition.

      “Good avening, Mr. Holcombe, is it yerself ag’in? Ye’ll find Katie inside, sir.”

      “Did you speak to her for me?” asked Holcombe, in a low voice; “did you try to help me gain her consent as you promised to do?”

      “Sure, and I did that. But, sir, ye know gyurls will be gyurls. The more ye coax ’em the wilfuller they gets. ’Tis yer own pleadin’ that’ll get her if anything will. An’ I hopes ye may, for I tells her she’ll never get a betther offer than yours, sir. ’Tis a good girl she is, and a tidy hand for anything from the kitchen to the parlour, and she’s never a fault except, maybe, a bit too much likin’ for dances and ruffles and ribbons, but that’s natural to her age and good looks if I do say it meself, bein’ her mither, Mr. Holcombe. Ye can spake ag’in to Katie, sir, and maybe this time ye’ll have luck unless Danny Conlan, the wild gossoon, has been at it ag’in overpersuadin’ her ag’inst ye.”

      Holcombe turned slightly pale, and his lips closed tightly for a moment.

      “I’ve heard of this fellow Conlan before. Why does he interfere? Why does he stand in the way? Is there anything between him and Katie? Does Katie care for him?” Mrs. Flynn gave a sigh, like a puff of a locomotive, and a flap upon the washboard with a sodden garment that sent Holcombe, well splashed, six feet away.

      “Ask me no questions about what’s in a gyurl’s heart and I’ll tell ye no lies. Her own mither can’t tell any more than yerself, Mr. Holcombe.” Holcombe stepped inside the cottage. Katie Flynn, with rolled-up sleeves, was ironing a dress of flounced muslin. Criticism of Holcombe’s deviation from his own sphere to this star of lower orbit must have waned at the sight of the girl. Her beauty was of the most solvent and convincing sort. Dusky Irish eyes, one great braid of jetty, shining hair, a crimson mouth, dimpling and shaping itself to every mood of its owner, a figure strong and graceful, seemingly full of imperishable life and action — Katie Flynn was one to be sought after and striven for.

      Holcombe went and stood by her side as she ironed, and watched the lithe play of muscles rolling beneath the satiny skin of her rounded forearms.

      “Katie,” he said, his voice concealing a certain anxiety beneath a wooing tenderness, “I have come for my answer. It isn’t necessary to repeat what we have talked over so often, but you know how anxious I am to have you. You know my circumstances and position, and that you will have every comfort and every privilege that you could ask for. Say ‘Yes,’ Katie, and I’ll be the luckiest man in this town to-day.”

      Kate set her iron down with a metallic click, and leaned her elbows upon the ironing board. Her great blue-black eyes went, in their Irish way, from sparkling fun to thoughtful melancholy.

      “Oh, Mr. Holcombe, I don’t know what to say. I know you’d be kind to me, and give me the best home I could ever expect. I’d like to say ‘yes’ — indeed I would. I’d about decided to tell you so, but there’s Danny — he objects so.”

      Danny again! Holcombe strode up and down the room impatiently frowning.

      “Who is this fellow Conlan, Katie?” he asked. “Every time I nearly get your consent he comes between us. Does he want you to live always in this cottage for the convenience of his mightiness? Why do you listen to him?”

      “He wants me,” said Katie, in the voice of a small, spoiled child.

      “Well, I want you too,” said Holcombe, masterfully. “If I could see this wonderful Mr. Conlan, of the persuasive tongue, I’d argue the matter with him.”

      “He’s been the champion middleweight fighter of this town,” said Katie, a bit mischievously.

      “Oh, has he! Well, that doesn’t frighten me, Katie. In fact, I am not sure but what I’d tackle him a few rounds myself, with you for the prize; although I’m somewhat rusty with the gloves.”

      “Whist! there he comes now,” exclaimed Katie, her eyes widening a little with apprehension.

      Holcombe looked out the door and saw a young man coming up from the gate. He walked with an easy swagger. His face was smooth and truculent, but not bad. He wore a cap pulled down to one eye. He walked inside the house and stopped at the door of the room in which stood his rival and the bone of contention.

      “You’re after my girl again, are you?” be