Read Of Irish Blood for Free Online Page B

fellow showed up, we’d present him to the other two, who’d vote on him. Maybe women couldn’t select the president of the United States but we could help each other pick the best man for an even more important job.
    “And if we don’t find such a fellow,” I said, “we have our work and each other.”
    I stretched my hand out, and Mame put hers on top of mine with Rose covering Mame’s, as the Three Musketeers did in the novel we’d all read, and we swore our oath.
    Now here’s Rose with John Larney and Mame with Ed and not a word to me from any of them. I look over at Aunt Kate, wondering. Is she the matchmaker? Snagging Mame for her sister’s son and Rose for her own? A neat enough situation and she knew the McCabe girls were fine women, not silly young girls. Mike liked to quote the saying, “It’s not the years in your life, it’s the life in your years.” Abraham Lincoln. The only good Republican ever.
    Now, I am not in any way, shape, or form a begrudger. Living with Henrietta made me swear never to fall into that trap. I’m only thinking that somebody could have said something to me, and I wonder will they have a double wedding, with me a double bridesmaid? And maybe Ed would ask his father, my uncle Steve, to walk the girls down the aisle, though that might be odd, him being the father of the groom. My brother Mike might be more suited.
    But here I am, planning their wedding, and them not even telling me! I assume they’d want me to stand up for them, but for all I know they might ask somebody else. Secrets! I hate secrets. And I thought we were so close.
    Just then I hear the most god-awful racket out on the street, the blurt of an engine and then a rattling sound.
    “An automobile,” says Ed, and we all stand up and go to the porch rail.
    Dusk now, but easy enough to see two big lights mounted on the hood of the horseless carriage as it gets closer. For all the talk of automobiles as the coming thing, there are very few around the place. Some in the Loop, which is what we call the heart of downtown where the horse tram tracks turn around on themselves. And, of course, the likes of Mrs. Potter Palmers and Marshall Field have chauffeur-driven vehicles, but not many automobiles come bouncing down Hillock or Archer either.
    “An Oldsmobile,” Ed says, “the latest model.”
    Like a carriage, all right, tall with four big wheels, the backseat higher than the front.
    “All that noise,” Aunt Kate says, “and the smell.”
    “Gasoline exhaust,” Ed says.
    “I like it,” I say. “Better than horse manure.”
    Always talk about limiting Chicago’s growth because the city’s being overrun by piles and piles of the stuff left by the hundreds of horses filling our streets. No room for more wagons when we already have all that muck splattering our clothes. Well, compared to the stink of horse droppings, automobile exhaust smells like lemon verbena.
    Now the automobile stops right in front of Aunt Kate’s. A man gets out wearing a long black duster coat with goggles over his face. He starts up the sidewalk leading to the porch.
    “Engine trouble,” John says.
    “Maybe the transmission,” Ed says.
    “Probably a valve overheated,” John says.
    “Or he needs water for the radiator,” Ed says.
    How knowledgeable the fellows are.
    Already tossing off words like “radiator” and “transmission.” Huge arguments around our dinner table about horseless carriages, with Mike all for them and Mart completely against.
    “Toys for the rich,” Mart said. “How many children will be run down and killed?”
    Henrietta agreed, saying, “The likes of us will never be able to afford an automobile, that’s for sure. One more way to mock the poor.”
    But Mam was more concerned about our uncle Michael’s blacksmith business. “Blackshirt Mike” they called him and he was great for giving jobs to men just arrived from Ireland. My own grandfather Michael Kelly had wielded a hammer onto an anvil, Mam