Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/184

172 "Sure," she laughed.

They were parting at her door. "A' right," he said. "See yuh to-morrah night."

And here was "to-morrah night!"

When they arrived at Dinkey's, she sat down, to look over the greasy bill of fare, her arms on the little table. It was a basement restaurant that offered a "regular" dinner for fifty cents. There were ants in the sugar-bowl and gravy stains in the salt-cellars.

"I could eat a horse," she said.

He turned to the unshaven waiter, absent-mindedly. "Same fer me."

When he stopped laughing with her at his mistake, he was more at ease with the situation. "Well, an' that 's no joke," he said, as soon as the waiter had left them, to bring soup.

She patted her back hair, smiling at him with the flirtatious air that is proper to a café dinner. He looked at her as if the sparkle in her face were so brilliant that it dazzled him to any defect of beauty in her. He weighed his fork in his big fingers. "Say," he asked, "did yuh mean that, las' night?"

"Mean what?"

"You know."

She tried to laugh. "Did you?"

"I seen Father Dumphy this afternoon."

"You did!" Her lips still held the wrinkles of her smile, but her eyes, fixed on him, kept twitching in and