Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/237

Rh The old man pushed up his hat from his forehead with the flat of his thumb. "He got the worst of it, did he? Well, he 'll niver win me over. I c'n tell you that, now. I got nothin' at all fer 'm but contimpt. He c'n go his way, an' I 'll go mine."

Barney rose, with a conspiring wink at the girl. "Excuse me a minute," he said. "I want to pick up that drink Pop dropped."

The Honorable Michael Maloney was a large and florid gentleman who bloomed in a white waistcoat with a red geranium in his lapel and a Panama hat on the side of his head. He had been a "gay bucko," as Barney said; and age had brought him the mouth of an old goat, with a long upper lip and a shallow chin clean-shaven between gray whiskers. His eyes were heavy-pouched; his nose was swollen; and yet there was, in his smile, an expression of professional benevolence and good-nature that marked him as "one of the boys" and accounted for his popularity.

He carried that smile like a flag of truce when he came with Tim and Barney to the place where old Nick Maloney and the girl were sitting; and his expression did not change when Nick, humping himself forward with his arms on his knees, refused to notice him. He held the girl's hand while he said genially: "Miss Mench'noff! Well, now, we 're glad to have yeh with us, I 'm sure o' that. It 's a fine day. How 're y' enjoyin' yerself."