Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/281

Rh "Aw, yuh 're as bad as them ol' maid ministers," she cried, "that 're allus writin' to the paypers about the divorce problum. If you men had more children, yuh 'd be havin' less trouble with yer wives."

"She does n't like the flat."

"The flat! What 's wrong with it, man?"

He looked at her as if he were going to tell her, flushed self-consciously, and went on with his game.

That look gave her her first suspicion of the truth. She lay awake a long time in the night, "puttin' two an' two togither," as she would have said. When she saw her daughter in the morning, she understood.

"Well," she said to herself, "I ain't goin' to butt in. Let her do things her own way if she wants to. She 'll learn as well by tryin' as by bein' told!"

She understood why Bailey did not play cribbage with her that night—though he pretended that it was because he had a headache. He spent the evening in the other end of the flat, with the doors closed against her so that she might not hear what Hetty was saying. The old woman darned his socks and assured herself that it was natural in the girl to want him to herself. She overlooked his guiltily apologetic manner toward her in the morning, and said nothing to Hetty when they were left alone together.

The girl swept the parlor herself that day, rearranged the furniture, and took down all the calendars—as Mrs. Jolifle discovered in the evening, when Bailey