Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/27

The Undoing of Dinney Crockett had been their only child, had died but a year before, and neither of them could quite forget it, as sometimes happens in this world.

Dinney did not forget that carriage, and it must be confessed that he made it a point to assume a most ridiculous and priggish expression of dejected meekness whenever it passed. He knew it would not make the sad-eyed woman any happier to feel that he had shot craps with every cent of her quarter!

But as time went on these little gifts grew more and more frequent, and, if kept up, would have been the ruin of the best news-boy in the Ward. The outcome of it all was that the sad-eyed woman came one day and drove off with Dinney in her carriage.

"George, do you know, I believe that child has consumption," she explained to her husband, who was really not a bit astonished at her act, "and I've brought him home, and I'm going to nurse him up for a while!"

George kissed her and called her a silly little woman, and said he supposed he'd have to let her have her own way. It was very lonely in that big house. 15