"
They anchored the water goats firmly in the lake, and left them
there to overcome their shyness, which seemed, as Fagan and Toole
left them, to be as great as ever. The goats gazed sadly, and
bleated longingly, after the two men as they disappeared in the
dusk, and when the men had passed entirely out of sight, the
goats looked at each other and complained bitterly.
Alderman Toole thoughtfully changed his wet clothes for dry
ones before he went to Casey's that evening, for he thought Dugan
might be there, and he was. He was there when Toole arrived, and
his brow was black. He had had a bad day of it. Everything had
gone wrong with him and his affairs. A large lump of his
adherents had sloughed off from his party and had affiliated with
his opponents, and the evening opposition paper had come out with
a red-hot article condemning the administration for reckless
extravagance. It had especially condemned Dugan for burdening the
city with new bonds to create an unneeded park, and the whole
thing had ended with a screech of ironic laughter over the--so
the editor called it--fitting capstone of the whole business, the
purchase of two dongola goats at perfectly extravagant prices.
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