Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/331

 With this mood of pessimism still heavy on him, he returned to the apartment, feeling himself strangely alien in those familiar surroundings. He threw his overcoat and his hat on the cot in the dining-room, reminding himself, as if with an effort, that it was the cot which he had brought out for Walter Pittsey and had never taken back to the room in which the other two boys slept; and it seemed that the incidents of that night had occurred a long time ago. Conroy was sitting with his head and arms on the table, apparently dozing. Bert Pittsey was busy in the little kitchen, from which there came an odour of scorched fat.

"Hello, you noble Thespian," he greeted Don. "Give us an impersonation of a man setting a table, will you? My hands are full."

"What's the matter with him?"

Pittsey laughed. "He's tired. He has had a hard day."

"What do you mean?"

"His money came this morning."

Don's isolation had raised him above fellow-sympathy, like a judge. He walked deliberately around the table, and putting a hand on Conroy's head he rolled it over on the arm to look at the boy's face. It was the flushed and bloated face of semi-drunkenness. "Ach!" he said, with a shudder of disgust.

Conroy roused himself, blinking. "What's the"

"Get up out of that!"

He glared, his eyes inflamed and still befogged with sleep. "What's chewing you?"

Don turned his back, without replying, and went to