Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/244

232 not yet understand them. Tim made the most applauded oration of the day; and afterwards, flushed with cheers and congratulations, he came on Fanny sitting alone on the beach. Their reconciliation was fairly complete in fifteen minutes. "You should n't 've said what you did," she wept, "back there on the boat."

"I would n't 've said it if I really meant it," he consoled her. "I did n't care what I said. I was mad."

"Did n't you mean it?"

"No, I did n't. An' it was n't true."

"What did you say it fer, then?"

"I don't know.… Aw, say, Fan," he pleaded, almost in tears himself at her distress, "fergit it. It was n't all my fault. I 'm all right, if you take me right. I 'm not much of a hand with a girl. I ain't like Barney."

"No. Thank the cats!" she said. "You ain't!"

But when they met Barney, he was so warm with pride in his brother's success on the platform, and so humorously meek with her, that she could not find it in her heart to give him so much as an ugly look. At the picnic "spread," to which they all sat down, he chaffed his parents, still, but with an affectionate raillery which the girl did not misunderstand. He waited on them jocularly, and made them comfortable, and smiled across the tablecloth at her with an irresistible "diviltry" that made her gay.

She even discovered that old Nick had the same family pride in the Honorable Michael's success that Barney had in Tim's, though the references to "Sheeny Mike"