Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/143

Rh Even her shoes seemed to have dried and shriveled, curling up at the toes. And she fluttered along in the light morning breeze, holding back against it, on her heels, with an odd effect of being carried forward faster than she wished to go.

She was Mrs. Byrne, from the floor below Mrs. Cregan's flat, and she had been starting out on a secret errand of her own when she heard the quarrel overhead and stopped to hear the end of it. There was something guilty in her manner, and she was evidently struggling between her desire to reach the next street unseen by Mrs. Cregan and her desire to know what had happened in the Cregan flat. Her curiosity proved the stronger.

She let the wind blow her alongside her friend's portly despair. She said, in the hoarse whisper that was all she had left of her voice: "Is it yerself, Mrs. Cregan? Yuh 're off to choorch early this mornin'."

Mrs. Cregan looked around, blinking to clear her eyes. "Choorch?" she said, on the plaintiveness of a high note that broke in her throat.

"Yuh 're cryin', woman!" Mrs. Bryne's look of craftiness changed at once to one of startled distress. "Come back out o' this with yuh." She caught Mrs. Cregan's arm. "It 's no thing to be doin' on the street! Come back, now. Where 're yuh goin'?"

Mrs. Cregan marched stolidly ahead and carried her neighbor with her. "I 've quit 'm."

"Quit who?"

"Himsilf.… Dinny."