That a man not connected with one of the old families, not possessed of a baccalaureate degree, should really be effective in the mayor's chair was such an unheard-of presumption that they denied the fact. Yet they could not claim that he assumed excess of air. His lack of exuberance was so marked, he had taken hold of his work with such seriousness and sobriety, that he seemed to be a man of great coldness, or one whose sense of triumph was tempered by a secret trouble. Those whose condemnation was not altogether sweeping found the phrase "an imitation" capable of conveying some consolation. He was like a wooden cigar, a lead quarter; in short, he was a loaf baked in a different oven, and that was enough. How could a man that wore a heavy watch-chain possess the genuine quality? In the judgment of the First Church, that chain was heavy enough to bind him hand and foot and to sink him in the depths of the sea. But criticisms from this source Emmet accepted as a matter of course, much as a Republican candidate for the Presidency would count on a solid Democratic South. A more serious menace to his future lay in the attitude of some of his own supporters, who supposed that the mayor's office could now be their lounging-place and headquarters. Bat Quayle, the leader of a strong constituency of the submerged tenth, had already departed breathing vengeance, when he discovered that there was nothing in the new _regime_ for the Boys. They had given their votes to Emmet in the confident expectation of special privilege and protection; but he had made no promises, and had none to keep. No previous Democratic mayor of Warwick had ever been able to dispense with the Boys, and it remained for Emmet to offset their loss by winning new supporters during his administration. Bat Quayle, he knew, would be picked up by his opponents and used against him two years hence; but two years seemed a long time, and the mayor shook out the lines and started off with a burst of speed, as if he would tumble black care into the snow behind him. The street was like a vista of fairyland. A new fall of snow had covered all unsightly stains of traffic, and now lay heaped on every inch of horizontal space, on branch and roof and post, on window-ledge and fence. The sky was clearing, and the last belated flakes were floating slowly downward, detached from the burdened roofs by light puffs of wind. To one glancing upward, the feathery visitors seemed to drop from the widening spaces of pale blue sky. The ringing sound of snow shovels and the crisp crunching of pedestrians' feet indicated a falling mercury. The air was filled with the jocund jingling of sleighbells, now coming, now near at hand, now lessening into the distance, a pleasing confusion of silvery sounds, not inharmonious in their varying pitch and intensity.