Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/185

Rh widening out in an alternation of incredulity and hope. "I thought yuh—I tol' 'em we 'd be aroun' to see 'm t'night—if yuh 'd come."

Her gaze searched his face like a light that took him full in the eyes and confused him. The waiter shuffled up with their soup and interrupted them. Carney, in his embarrassment, gulped a steaming spoonful and burned his throat. He felt her smile on him and met it with a twisted mouth.

"Did—did yuh mean it?" he insisted.

She answered, addressing her plate: "I guess so—if you did."

When she looked up, she saw him with another scalding mouthful at his lips, and she cried: "You 'll burn yourself!"

He spilled it into the plate. He wiped the splatter from his coat-front with his table napkin and mopped his forehead. "Gee!" he said.

"Fish?" the waiter asked, behind her.

"Yep," she answered. "Fish." And she spoke in the voice of a woman who was henceforth to do the ordering for two.

She had the feminine ability to take command of a sentimental situation, and Carney evidently had the masculine inability to do anything of the sort. She continued in charge of the dinner because he ate as if he did not know what he was putting in. his mouth. If she wondered what was going on in his mind, she did not ask him. At one moment, he devoured his food; at the next, he sat with meat impaled on the tines of his fork,