Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/195

183 She glanced around coldly. "What do you want to rent a furnished flat for?"

"I did n't," he bubbled. "I rented it empty, an' furnished it myself."

"To-day?" she cried.

"Yah," he confessed more doubtfully.

"And that 's what you 've been doing all day!"

He nodded.

"Well, Phil Carney!" she wailed. "If that ain't the meanest! Why—why—" She choked up with tears and anger. "Why, that 's all the fun! She sat down in one of his damask chairs, fumbling for her handkerchief.

He closed the door on his fiasco. "Well, say," he began.

"Aw, shut up," she wept. "You go 'n' do everything wrong. I bet you got the dangdest lot of old junk—"

"I ain't," he defended himself. "I got the best they had."

"The best they had!" She summed up the shoddy magnificence of the parlor in a sweeping glance of disgust.

He turned his back on her to look out of the window. She whisked into the bedroom. "Ach!" he heard her cry. "Pine! … Cotton battin'!… Excelsior! It ain't even a hair mattress!" She flung into the dining-room—and stopped in the doorway.

The pitiful mute expectation of the two chairs, drawn up to the delicatessen dinner, confronted her with a