Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/280

268 Joliffe's sake, that he did enjoy them. She exerted herself to please him, performed miracles in cookery, and tried to keep the table lively with an indomitable good nature. But she did not understand what was wrong. She thought there had been some belated lover's quarrel between the two, and she considered it the part of wisdom to ask no questions. She was cheerfully happy herself, worked singing, read the newspapers in her rocking-chair, and kept to her own end of the flat. "The gurl 's a fool," she told herself, "but I was the same mesilf at her age.… Poor Jollie! Heaven give 'm rest!" She laughed to herself. "Us women—we 're danged hard to live with!"

She played her part until it was not humanly possible to play it longer. Then she scolded her daughter and got nothing but a malevolent look. She advised Bailey to take his wife to the theater at night, and he did so, though he fell asleep in his seat. Then he took her to Coney Island on a Saturday afternoon, and came back desperately discouraged—for the girl had told him calmly that she would not live in the flat more than a month longer; that as soon as the cool weather came, she would return to work in some shop.

He sat with his cards in his hands, too worried to play his game. He gazed at nothing, with an empty pipe in his mouth.

"She wants a couple o' babies," Mrs. Joliffe declared. "When she has some squallin' young appitites to be stuffin' she 'll have no time to be thinkin' of ersilf." He shook his head.