"It's foolish you are to be goin' into the taxicab business," Ma Ryan lugubriously assured Speedy while he waited Danny's draining of his breakfast coffee cup in the Ryan kitchen the next morning.
"Why, Mrs. Ryan?" Speedy asked. He had arrived there before any of the Ryans were out of bed.
"It's risking your life to be drivin' around the way traffic is these days. Especially with half the drivers hoodlums and half-wits. And the turrible places you have to hang around to get your business—speakeasies and night clubs and such. Not to speak of the master brute of them all, this Jerry Moore that my Danny works for. We was girls and boys together down in Charleton Street and he was always a bullyin' one. He treats his help awful. With your careless ways, Speedy, you won't last half a day with him even if he gives you a job, which I doubt he will."
"Oh, lay off, ma," Danny yawned as he wiped his egg-stained mouth with a napkin and reached for his coat from the back of his chair. "Taxi drivin' ain't a bad life and Moore is all right if you're on the job. I don't believe you and him was such bad friends when you were young. At least he gave me a job right away when I told him I was Ellen Cassidy's boy."
