Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/150

138 other side! Th' other side! Yuh 're no better than any one ilse!' An' I had to chase through the mud after him! The little wizened runt! He 's talkin' like an anarchist! An' that 's why he smashed me dish. He 'll have no one say 'No' to 'im.… Ah, Mrs. Byrne, niver marry a man older than yersilf."

"Thank yuh," Mrs. Byrne replied with hoarse sarcasm. "I 'm not likely to, at my age." She added, consolingly: "Cregan 's young fer his years. Drivin' a Fift' Avenah bus is fine, preservin', outdoor work."

"It is that!" And Mrs. Cregan's tone remarked that the fact was the more to be deplored. "He 'll be crankier an' crabbeder the older he grows." She dipped to her coffee and swallowed hard.

Mrs. Byrne had screwed up her eyes to squint at an idea that could not well be looked in the face. When she spoke it was to say slyly: "God forbid! But they do go off sometimes in a puff. He looks as if he 'd live fer long enough, thank Heaven. But yuh never can tell."

Mrs. Cregan blnked, held her hand for a moment, and then began hastily to fill her mouth with food. The silence that ensued was long, enough to take on an appearance of guilt.

It was long enough, too, for Mrs. Byrne to "contrive a procedure."

"Yuh never can tell," she began, unless yuh have doin's with the-devil—like them gipsies that see what 's comin' by lookin' in the flat o' yer hand. There 's one o' them aroun' the corner, an' they say she told Minnie