Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/270

258 half jocularly. Mrs. Joliffe's daughter and she had lived happily enough together, the mother being contented to stay at home and keep house in their little flat, and the girl willing to work all day in the millinery department of Altgelt's Sixth Avenue store. When the daughter married Bailey, who had charge of a section of Altgelt's grocery department, Mrs. Joliffe saw them off on a honeymoon excursion to Niagara Falls, and undertook to have their new home ready for them before they returned. "If yuh c'u'd eat hats," she said, "I 'd not need to bother with yuh. But I 'd better be lookin' after yer meals a while, till Hetty learns how to trim a steak. Go along with yuh, an' don't fall in the water. I 'll have everythin' set up fer yuh betimes."

She had it set up now, and she was expecting their return at any moment. They had found a "jew'l of a flat," with doors at both ends and a kitchen in the middle; and that kitchen was the largest room in the apartment. There was a bedroom for Mrs. Joliffe, opening off the dining-room and separated from the young couple's quarters by the whole length of the flat. "I c'n live here," she told herself, "with no more trouble to them than an ol' dog in their back yard." Bailey had given her money to spend on furnishing. She had more of her own; she had a small estate, which her husband had left her; and she did not spare her own in her desire to give her daughter "a start that anny gurl c'u'd be proud o'."

She covered the floors with carpets and then covered the carpets with druggets, with rag rugs, with