Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/222

210 sand and paving-blocks and dry hay and dusty rubble, from the barges and canal boats in the neighboring slips. "An' it might 've been somethin' cool," Barney complained, jocularly. "They might 've been unloadin' ice barges." At the foot of the street a row of heat-exhausted horses from a crosstown car line stood under a cotton awning upon which a stable-boy was playing a stream of water from a hose. Barney said: "If that ain't enough to make you wish you was born a horse!"

His brother Tim put in, ill-temperedly: "Aw, cut it out, will you? You talk too much."

Mrs. Maloney interfered placidly: "Youse two 'ud quarrel in yer sleep."

After a moment of smiling reflection, Barney replied, unrepressed: "I guess you 'd think we were quarrelin' if we did n't both snore on the same note."

"Let be!" she said.

She fanned herself with a crumpled newspaper. Her husband tried to polish his forehead dry with a moist "wipe." The brother muttered something that was unintelligible. And Barney winked, with undiscouraged facetiousness, at the girl.

It was for her, of course, that all this strained wit of his had been displayed.

She was a little Polish-American milliner with dark eyes that were large in a small face. She wore long silk gloves, and her dress was an extravagant creation of frills and flounces that seemed to have been designed on the same model as her lace-trimmed hat. It was too fine a costume for such a mere family party, but she had