Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/82



towards those more affluent and, therefore, more socially important than herself, Mrs. Toomey's thoughts were much the color of the serge into which she slashed.

Finally, after a glance at the clock, she walked to the window to look for her husband. He was not in sight. As she lingered her glance fell on Mormon Joe's tar-paper shack that set in the middle of the lot on the diagonal comer from their house, and she told herself bitterly that even that drunken renegade, that social pariah, had enough to eat.

Her face brightened as Toomey turned the comer and promptly lengthened when she saw that he was emptyhanded and walking with the exaggerated swagger which she was coming to recognize as a sign of failure.

A glimpse of his face as he came in, banged the door, and flung off his hat and coat made her hesitate to speak.

"Well?" he glared at her. "Why don't you say something?"

"What is there to say, Jap? " meekly. '"I see he refused you."

" Refused me ? He insulted me 1!" mrs. Toomey looked hurt.

"What did he say, Jap?"

" He offered me fifteen dollars a week to clerk."

Toomey resented fiercely the pleased and hopeful expression on his wife's face, and added:

" I suppose you'd like to see me cutting calico and fishing salt pork out of the brine? "

She ventured timidly :

"I thought you might take it until something worth while turned up." "Maybe," he sneered, ** I could get a job swamping in " Tinhorn's ' place washing fly specks off the windows and sweeping out."