“Good fellows,” repeated old Jimmy with contempt. “I recollect seein' a picture once, a picture of a girl--a young wife, she is--lyin' with her head on an untouched dinner table--fallen asleep, poor thing! Th' clock in the picture is pointin' to midnight. There she's been waitin' with th' dinner she's cooked with her own little lovin' mitts, for that souse of a husband to come home. Under th' picture it says, 'For he's a jolly good fellow!'” “Somebody'd ought to have put a head on him!” quoth Jew Yetta, whose sympathies were both active and militant. “Say,” went on Jimmy, “that picture gets on my nerves. A week later I'm down be th' old Delmonico joint at Twenty-sixth an' Broadway. It's meb-by one o'clock in th' mornin'. As I'm goin' by th' Twenty-sixt' Street door, out floats a fleet of Willies, stewed to the gills, singin' in honor of a dude who's in th' middle, 'For he's a jolly good fellow.' “'Who's that galoot?' I asks th' dub who's slammin' carriage doors at the curb. 'Is he a married man?' “'He's married all right,” says th' door-slammin' dub. “Wit that I tears into him. It's a good while ago, an' I could slug a little. Be th' time th' copper gets there, I've got that jolly good fellow lookin' like he'd been caught whistlin' _Croppies Lie Down_ at Fiftieth Street an' Fift' Avenoo when th' Cathedral lets out.” “Well, I'm not married,” remarked the Wop, snappishly;--“I'm not married; I niver was married; an' I niver will be married aloive.” “Did youse notice?” remarked the Dropper, “how they gets a roar out of old Boss Croker? He's for racin' all right.” “Naturally,” said old Jimmy. “Him ownin' race horses, Croker's for th' race tracks. He don't cut no ice.” “How much do yez figger Croker had cleaned up, Jimmy, when he made his getaway for Ireland?” asked the Wop, licking an envious lip. “Without comin' down to book-keepin',” returned old Jimmy, carelessly, “my understandin' is that, be havin' th' whole wad changed into thousand dollar bills, he's able to get it down to th' dock on a dray.” The Grabber came in. He beckoned Slimmy, and the two were at once immersed in serious whisperings. “What are youse two stews chinnin' about?” called out the Dropper lazily, from across the room. “Be youse thinkin' of orderin' th' beer?” “It's about Indian Louie,” replied Slimmy, angrily. “Th' Grabber here says Louie's out to skin us.” “Indian Louie,” remarked the Wop, with a gleam in his little gray eye. “That's th' labberick w'at's goin' to shti-i-ick up me poolroom f'r thim fifty bones. Anny wan that'd have annything to do wit' a bum loike him ought to get skinned.” “W'at's he tryin' to saw off on youse?” asked the Dropper. “This is th' proposition.” It was the Grabber now. “Me an' Slimmy here goes in wit' Louie to give that racket last week in Tammany Hall. Now Louie's got th' whole bundle, an' he won't split it. Me an' Slimmy's been t'run down for six hundred good iron dollars apiece.”