Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/149

137 neighbor's children and thinking it a healthy, ugly brat whom nobody would have missed! She stared at the bare walls and the bare tables of the restaurant, and found the place, by comparison with her own cozy flat, as unhomelike as the waiting-room of a railroad station—the waiting-room of a railroad station when you have said good-bye to your past and the train has not yet arrived to carry you to your future.

As her pancakes were served to her, she bent over the plate to hide a tear that trickled down her nose. It splashed on the piece of food that she raised to her mouth. She ate it—tear and all.

"An' them no bigger than the top of a tomato can!" Mrs. Byrne was muttering.

Mrs. Cregan ate, and the food helped to stop her tears. It was the strong coffee, at last, that brought her back her voice. "If it 'd b'en him he 'd 'a' gone an' got drunk," she said, wiping her cheeks with her napkin. "The men have the best of it. Us women have to take it all starin' sober."

"They 're no more than children," Mrs. Byrne replied, "an' they 're to be treated as such. Sure, Cregan could n't live without yuh. He 'd have no buttons to his pants in a week." "An' him!" Mrs. Cregan cried "Iver since the Raypublicuns got licked; there 's be'n no gettin' on with him at all. Thim Sunday papers 've toorned his head. He 's all blather about his rights an' his wrongs. Th' other moornin', did n't I try to get on his bus from the wrong side o' the crossin', an' he bawls at me: 'Th'