Malachi leaned his big body against his bar, and over his shoulder, out of the corner of his mouth, he said: “Seegaar.” The bartender slid the box along the counter and rang up another ten cents on the cash register. “Well, here’s lookin’ at you,” said Brennan, raising the little tumbler. “Dhrink heaarty,” said Malachi Nolan. * * * * * The long day was done, and Malachi, in shirt-sleeves and stockinged feet, sat in his big plush rocking-chair, his legs stretched out before him, taking his ease at his own hearth. When he had come home at midnight, Nora, who always sat up for him, had insisted upon brewing him a cup of tea, under the impression, common to a certain class of women, that it has great medicinal qualities. Malachi had sipped it obediently, though he had not cared for it after all the mineral waters he had drunk that day, and had enjoyed far more than the tea the freckled Irish face of his daughter, as he gravely goggled at her over the rim of the saucer into which he had poured the beverage to cool it. They were in what Malachi called the parlor of their flat, though Nora had lately taken to calling it the drawing-room. It was furnished mostly in pieces upholstered in plush. Over the mantelpiece hung a large crayon portrait of a woman whose face, despite the insipidity the canvasing artist had given it, still showed the toil she had endured, if it told little of her strong character, while that disregard for expense which was expressed in the gilt frame marked it as a memorial of the dead. It was, of course, the face of Malachi’s wife, and when Nora, in her new culture, had hinted at hanging it in his bedroom, she had, for the first time in her life, quailed before that stubborn spirit with which her father ruled the First Ward. The few books on the center-table treated mostly of religious subjects, though there were queer bound volumes of Irish poetry, and on the wall there were one or two etchings in oaken frames. In a corner was a crucifix with a candle before it. But the one object in the room that dominated all the rest with its aggressive worldliness, was an upright piano, and Nora now sat swinging on the stool, her back to the instrument, her elbows behind her on the keys. She had partly prepared for bed, for she wore a flannel wrapper and her brilliant black hair hung in a braid down her back. Celtic blue eyes lighted up her face, and now they smiled under their long, black lashes upon this big saloon-keeper whom half the city feared, as if the simple sight of him were reward enough for her long hours of waiting. Malachi finished his cup of tea and hurriedly inserted a cigar in the hole at the corner of his mouth, and thus confirmed in comfort, he said: “Nora, child, do ye sing now--phat was that--it wint hummin’ t’rough me head th’ daay. Well, well, well, let me see now--hum-m-m-m--it goes something like--” And he hummed a quavering old tune: