“But, my dear,” cried Perkins, dismayed, “you didn’t tell him you wanted him to put up my lamps?  I’m not elected yet.”

The agony of the moment for Perkins can be better imagined than portrayed.

“He didn’t give us the chance,” said the mother-in-law.  “He merely swore.”

Perkins drew a sigh of relief.  He understood it all now, and in spite of the position in which he was placed he was glad.  “Jove!” he said to himself, “it was a narrow escape.  Suppose O’Hara had come!  He’d have enjoyed laying pipes for a Mayor’s lamps for me—­two weeks before election.”

And for the first time in weeks Perkins was faintly mirthful.  The narrowness of his escape had made him hysterical, and he actually indulged in the luxury of a nervous laugh.

“That accounts for the rumor,” he said to himself, and then his heart grew heavy again.  “The rumor is true, and—­Oh, well, this is what I get for dabbling in politics.  If I ever get out of this alive, I vow by all the gods politics shall know me no more.”

“It was all right—­my asking O’Hara, Thaddeus?” asked Mrs. Perkins.

“Oh yes, certainly, my dear—­perfectly right.  O’Hara is indeed, as you thought, the most noted, not to say notorious, contractor in town, only he’s not laying pipes just now.  He’s pulling wires.”

“For telephones, I presume?” said the old lady, placidly.

“Well, in a way,” replied Thaddeus.  “There’s a great deal of vocality about O’Hara’s wires.  But, Bess,” he added, seriously, “just drop the lamps until we get ’em, and confine your telephoning to your intimate friends.  An Irishman on a telephone in political times is apt to be a trifle—­er—­artless in his choice of words.  If you must talk to one of ’em, remember to put in the lightning plug before you begin.”

With which injunction the candidate departed to address the Mohawks, an independent political organization in the Second Ward, which was made up of thinking men who never indorsed a candidate without knowing why, and rarely before three o’clock of the afternoon of election day at that, by whom he was received with cheers and back-slapping and button-holings which convinced him that he was the most popular man on earth, though on election day—­but election day has yet to be described.  It came, and with it there came to Perkins a feeling very much like that which the small boy experiences on the day before Christmas.  He has been good for two months, and he knows that to-morrow the period of probation will be over and he can be as bad as he pleases again for a little while anyhow.

“However it turns out, I can tell ’em all to go to the devil to-morrow,” chuckled Thaddeus, rubbing his hands gleefully.

“I don’t think you ought to forget the lamps, Thaddeus,” observed the mother-in-law at breakfast.  “Here it is election day and you haven’t yet decided where they shall go.  Now I really think—­”