“‘And wood,’ says I.  ‘And marble and plaster and iron.’

“‘The matter will be attended to at once,’ says the man, putting up his book.

“‘Are ye the Park Commissioner?’ I asks.

“‘I own the Beersheba Flats,’ says he.  ’God bless the grass and the trees that give extra benefits to a man’s tenants.  The rents shall be raised fifteen per cent. to-morrow.  Good-night,’ says he.”

XVII

THE EASTER OF THE SOUL

It is hardly likely that a goddess may die.  Then Eastre, the old Saxon goddess of spring, must be laughing in her muslin sleeve at people who believe that Easter, her namesake, exists only along certain strips of Fifth Avenue pavement after church service.

Aye!  It belongs to the world.  The ptarmigan in Chilkoot Pass discards his winter white feathers for brown; the Patagonian Beau Brummell oils his chignon and clubs him another sweetheart to drag to his skull-strewn flat.  And down in Chrystie Street—­

Mr.  “Tiger” McQuirk arose with a feeling of disquiet that he did not understand.  With a practised foot he rolled three of his younger brothers like logs out of his way as they lay sleeping on the floor.  Before a foot-square looking glass hung by the window he stood and shaved himself.  If that may seem to you a task too slight to be thus impressively chronicled, I bear with you; you do not know of the areas to be accomplished in traversing the cheek and chin of Mr. McQuirk.

McQuirk, senior, had gone to work long before.  The big son of the house was idle.  He was a marble-cutter, and the marble-cutters were out on a strike.

“What ails ye?” asked his mother, looking at him curiously; “are ye not feeling well the morning, maybe now?”

“He’s thinking along of Annie Maria Doyle,” impudently explained younger brother Tim, ten years old.

“Tiger” reached over the hand of a champion and swept the small McQuirk from his chair.

“I feel fine,” said he, “beyond a touch of the I-don’t-know-what-you-call-its.  I feel like there was going to be earthquakes or music or a trifle of chills and fever or maybe a picnic.  I don’t know how I feel.  I feel like knocking the face off a policeman, or else maybe like playing Coney Island straight across the board from pop-corn to the elephant houdahs.”

“It’s the spring in yer bones,” said Mrs. McQuirk.  “It’s the sap risin’.  Time was when I couldn’t keep me feet still nor me head cool when the earthworms began to crawl out in the dew of the mornin’.  ’Tis a bit of tea will do ye good, made from pipsissewa and gentian bark at the druggist’s.”

“Back up!” said Mr. McQuirk, impatiently.  “There’s no spring in sight.  There’s snow yet on the shed in Donovan’s backyard.  And yesterday they puts open cars on the Sixth Avenue lines, and the janitors have quit ordering coal.  And that means six weeks more of winter, by all the signs that be.”