"'won't you do
me the favor to come over to-morrow evening at seven and dine with me?
Mr. Ungerich, Mr. Duvanicki, and several others will very likely drop
in afterward. I have asked Mr. Tiernan to come at the same time.
Sincerely, John J. McKenty.' That's the way he does it," added Mr.
Kerrigan; "just like that."

He kissed the letter mockingly and put it back into his pocket.

"Sure I got one, jist the same way. The very same langwidge, nearly,"
commented Mr. Tiernan, sweetly. "He's beginning to wake up, eh? What!
The little old first and second are beginning to look purty big just
now, eh? What!"

"Tush!" observed Mr. Kerrigan to Mr. Tiernan, with a marked sardonic
emphasis, "that combination won't last forever. They've been getting
too big for their pants, I'm thinking. Well, it's a long road, eh?
It's pretty near time, what?"

"You're right," responded Mr. Tiernan, feelingly. "It is a long road.
These are the two big wards of the city, and everybody knows it. If we
turn on them at the last moment where will they be, eh?"

He put a fat finger alongside of his heavy reddish nose and looked at
Mr. Kerrigan out of squinted eyes.

"You're damned right," replied the little politician, cheerfully.

They went to the dinner separately, so as not to appear to have
conferred before, and greeted each other on arriving as though they had
not seen each other for days.

"How's business, Mike?"

"Oh, fair, Pat. How's things with you?"

"So so."

"Things lookin' all right in your ward for November?"

Mr. Tiernan wrinkled a fat forehead. "Can't tell yet." All this was
for the benefit of Mr. McKenty, who did not suspect rank party
disloyalty.

Nothing much came of this conference, except that they sat about
discussing in a general way wards, pluralities, what Zeigler was likely
to do with the twelfth, whether Pinski could make it in the sixth,
Schlumbohm in the twentieth, and so on. New Republican contestants in
old, safe Democratic wards were making things look dubious.

"And how about the first, Kerrigan?" inquired Ungerich, a thin,
reflective German-American of shrewd presence. Ungerich was one who
had hitherto wormed himself higher in McKenty's favor than either
Kerrigan or Tiernan.

"Oh, the first's all right," replied Kerrigan, archly. "Of course you
never can tell. This fellow Scully may do something, but I don't think
it will be much. If we have the same police protection--"

Ungerich was