Page:Firecrackers a realistic novel.pdf/252



I just love food, Wintergreen confessed.

It's good for you, little girl, he advised her. You're growing, and you need it.

Suspicious that he was spoofing her, she gave him a sullen glance, and only the arrival of the alligator pear averted an unpleasant scene.

Not vitally interested in the pear, finding his cocktail a little acid, bored with the situation in general, reflecting that in the rôle of Casanova he appeared to be a failure, Paul's gaze wandered round the room. Across the waste of unoccupied tables he noted that the drunken fellow had not altered his position. Curious that the waiters had made no attempt to remove him. Paul's eyes strayed on until they caught the windows, and through one of these they beheld a petrifying vision. From the limbs of a crab-apple-tree in full bloom, a child, in gymnasium bloomers, hung by her calves, in such a position that she could see directly into