"Tell me about the Tammany Tiger, if you please," he said once. "I want
to know what kind of an animal it is."
From a point of view somewhat different from that of Mount Dunstan and
Mr. Penzance, Betty Vanderpoel found talk with him interesting. To her
he did not wear the aspect of a foreign product. She had not met and
conversed with young men like him, but she knew of them. Stringent
precautions were taken to protect her father from their ingenuous
enterprises. They were not permitted to enter his offices; they were
even discouraged from hovering about their neighbourhood when seen and
suspected. The atmosphere, it was understood, was to be, if possible,
disinfected of agents. This one, lying softly in the four-post bed,
cheerfully grateful for the kindness shown him, and plainly filled with
delight in his adventure, despite the physical discomforts attending
it, gave her, as he began to recover, new views of the life he lived in
common with his kind. It was like reading scenes from a realistic novel
of New York life to listen to his frank, slangy conversation. To her,
as well as to Mr. Penzance, sidelights were thrown upon existence in the
"hall bedroom" and upon previously unknown phases of business life in
Broadway and roaring "downtown" streets.
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