Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/224

212 Barney put his hat on the back of his head and regarded her with a bold admiration. "Oh, gee!" he sighed, "but this picnic 's a hot frost!"

She shot a smile at him under the lace fall of her hat. His mother replied, literally, with her usual patient optimism: "We 'll get the more good of ut when we get out whur ut 's cool."

"I could stand it," Barney said, "if some one 'd only encourage me. I 'm not so pretty, but I 'm a nice boy."

The girl laughed, drawing up her glove as if she found her finery less uncomfortably warm. When the whistle of the distant boat split the hot air with three shrill notes of warning to the barge, Barney stood up to see a committeeman in the bow of the approaching tug waving cheerily as it bore down on them. "Well," he said, as he seated himself again, "here they come. We 'll be gettin' Home Rule fer dear ol' Ireland next. How about it, Tim? Think the speech 'll do it?"

"What speech?" The brother, as he turned his head, slanted it—one eyebrow up and one down—to rake Barney with an oblique and dangerous eye. "Don't try to show off, now," he growled. "You ain't funny."

"No, I 'm as solemn as a dead mass." He took the girl into the joke with a twinkling side glance. "It hurts me to see you crackin' yer face that way, though. If you wanted to laugh, what 'd you come to a picnic fer?"