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While he was thinking of that, his eyes suddenly brightened with excitement. The street-sprinkler, the dear old street-sprinkler, was coming! David's heart beat faster as he listened to the slow creak and clacking oscillation of the heavy wheels. Then came the damp, dusty, good smell which always brought to him such a sense of mysterious romance!
But the sparrows had many matters to attend to before all the milkmen and bakers got abroad: they must take their morning dust-bath, for one thing, in the worn places between the cobble-stones, before the street-sprinkler began its sloppy rounds. There was a constant whirl out of the tree-tops now.
She was all right on telling about them; she was strong on that, but somehow they never seemed to know when they were wanted. That is their great fault; they are so unreliable. Once let them get loose from a Cinderella book, and their business system is always defective. How, then, can a little boy expect to accomplish any miracles like riding on the street-sprinkler?
"'Twas disturbed I was in mind and proclivities by losing me job, bein' already harassed in me soul on account of havin' quarrelled with Norah Flynn a week before by reason of hard words spoken at the Dairymen and Street-Sprinkler Drivers' semi-annual ball, caused by jealousy and prickly heat and that divil, Andy Coghlin.
I hurried out and overtook the man in gray half-way down the block. He looked as I had seen him in my fancy a thousand times truculent, gray and awful. He walked with the white oak staff, and but for the street-sprinkler the dust would have been flying under his tread. I caught him by the sleeve and steered him to a dark angle of a building.
Perhaps the lazy clamor of the wagon and the hissing sound of the steadily gushing water made too big a noise for the voice of such a little boy to be heard. Do you call that any way for the street-sprinkler man to act? But of course there might be some good reason for such criminal behavior.
No prince out of a fairy story could be more marvelous to him than the coatless driver up there on the seat under his great canvas umbrella that had advertisements printed on it. Always when the street-sprinkler passed, David had watched it covetously, and now was his chance. He would proclaim himself. He would not have to wish and wish and wish any more about it.
I turned on my heel and strode out o' that store head up an' I was some glad that Hammy had taught me what strodin' was, 'cause the rest o' the gang opened up a path you could 'a' drove a street-sprinkler through. I didn't like the looks o' that lawyer, he reminded me of a rat. I don't care much for the law anyhow.
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