Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/147

135 "Come back, then, an' have a bite with me."

"Niver! I 'll niver go back."

Mrs. Byrne hitched up her shawl. "Come along then to the da-ary restr'unt. There 's no one home to miss me. I 'll take a bit o' holiday, this mornin', meself. I 've been wantin' to taste one o' those batter cakes they make in the restr'unt windahs, this long enough."

"Yuh 've ate yer breakfast."

"I have not," Mrs. Byrne replied. "I was off to the grocer to buy some sugar when yuh stopped me."

It was a lie. She had, in fact, started out, secretly, on a guilty errand which she should not acknowledge.

"It 's a lonely meal I 'd 've been havin'," she said, "with Byrne down at the boiler house an' the boy off on his run."

Mrs. Cregan did not reply, and they came to Sixth Avenue without more words. They paused before a dairy restaurant that advertised its "Surpassing Coffee" in white-enamel letters on its shop-front windows. Mrs. Cregan's hunger drew her in, but slowly; and Mrs. Byrne followed, coughing to conceal her embarrassment.

It was the first time that Mrs. Byrne had ever sat down in any public restaurant, except the eating-halls at Coney Island (where she went with "basket parties") or the "ice-cream parlors" at Fort George. And she glanced about her, at tiled walls and mosaic floors, with