A good looking young fellow and a tall, slender girl with flashing black eyes and a compelxion that would put a midsummer rose to blush, walked into New York’s historic old City Hall the other day and looked about them hesitatingly.
"Yes, this is the place," said the dainty maid to her escort, "but I don’t just know where the right room is --- I’ve never been there before, you know," and then she blushed furiously.
A grizzled policeman stepped up, as if in answer.
"Where’s the Marriage License Bureau, please?" queried the young fellow, trying to look unconcerned, and the bug policeman, with a half grin, led the young people to it.
City Clerk P.J.Scully, who bosses the bob along with a whole lot of other city business, happened to be on hand. He got out his license blanks and started to take down the routine answers ---- in the sunny month of June his bureau handles something like 150 to 200 a day and the thing gets to be monotonous, even if to each succeeding couple it is the newest in all the world.
"Theodosius T. Meehan," spoke the bride-groom-to-be, "and I live at No. 860 West End Avenue." The rest of the questions were perfunctory and soon answered, and then Mr. Scully looked up at the young woman, who was blushing still. "Full name, please?"
"Madeleine Gilroy."
The City Clerk’s pen stopped right there and he looked up quizzically. "Not little Madge Gilroy, daughter of the Mayor?" "The same!" laughed the bride-to-be. "My my!" echoed Mr. Scully, "who would have thought it! Why, it seems only yesterday when you were down here in short petticoats and long pigtails with your pap --- how the years do fly!"
"Indeed they do," answered Miss Gilroy, "It’s almost twenty years ago, and I was only six years old then." "Oh, I remember," mused Mr. Scully, "I remember well the old days. Your father was Mayor then and used to bring you down here sometimes and you’d play around all day while he attended to business and then go home with him at night. And do you remember how you big brother or your mother would bring you down on Friday afternoons and he take you away to the country for over Sunday?"
"Of course I do," laughed Miss Gilroy.
"Well, well," Mr. Scully ran on, "there’s a few around here now and then who were here then. Some of them are dead and some are out of politics and some of them are too old even to come down to City Hall now."
What City Clerk Scully said was only too true. Mayor Gilroy passed away last December, and his predecessor, Mayor Grant, is gone too. So is his successor, Mayor Strong. Marty Keese, the aged janitor of City Hall, who dandled little Madge on his knee when she played about the corridors, has joined the great majority, and Terry Gallager, the Mayor’s special policeman, known as "the handsomest man on the force," has long since retired. There is hardly a man in the Mayor’s office today who was there when Mayor Gilroy was the city’s chief executive. Eddie Hetheringotn, who has been with so many Mayors that his memory fails him as to the number, was one who remembered Miss Gilroy when she played around her father’s big office.
"She was merry little thing," he laughed when he heard about her being a grown-up young lady now and applying for a marriage license, and so did some of the old-line politicians who still haunt "The Hall."
Those hard-headed old fellows, used to giving --- and taking--- the toughest of knocks always had a soft corner in their flinty hearts of the little black-haired sprite, the Mayors’ baby daughter. Many a time did she crawl up into their laps and prattle on them while they were waiting without to get a word with the Mayor or to ask a political favor for some trusty henchman. Some of them found out, too ---crafty old politicians --- that if they could win the daughter they stood a fine chance with the father.
"New York’s Little Girl" was the title they gave her, and it has stuck to her ever since, though now Miss Gilroy is a stylish young lady, if you please, and as fetching and smart as any girl in town. She is in mourning for her father at present, but the somber black only heightens the roses in her face and makes her slender figure more slender still.
