Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/141



RS. CREGAN wept, and her tears were ludicrous. She was as fat as a Falstaff. Her features were as ill-suited for the expression of grief as a circus clown's. She had not even a channel in her plump cheeks to drain the tears from the corners of her eyes; and the slow drops, large and unctuous, trickled down her round jowl and soaked into her bonnet-strings, leaving her cheeks as fresh and as ruddy in the sunlight as if they had been merely wet with perspiration. Her eyes stared, unpuckered, apparently unconscious that they wept. Her mouth was tight in an expression of resentful determination. Only her little round chin trembled—like a child's.

And yet Mrs. Cregan was as nearly heart-broken as she had ever been in her life. She was leaving her husband. What was more grievous to her, she was leaving her home. She was on the streets of New York, with her small savings in her greasy purse—clasped tightly in her two hands under her Sunday cape, that was trimmed with fringe and tassels in a way to remind you of a lambrequin. She did not know where to go. There was no one to whom she could turn for aid, and she would not go to any one for pity. Behind her was the wreck of a breakfast table—the visible symbol of her ruined home—with a cursing Irishman, whom nobody could