Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/293

Rh She replaced her glasses and resumed her darning desperately. "I don't know whatever we 'll do—if the Musée shuts up—the Professor an' me. We have n't got a penny put by. Oh, dear! I 'm that worried I can't sleep nights." She added, unexpectedly: "You must n't be fightin' with him. He 's worried. That 's what makes him bad-tempered."

Redney and the Professor had come to an open quarrel on the previous day because Redney had wished to call his wares on the floors of the Musée, and the Professor, as floor-manager, had refused to let him "solicit" except silently.

"He seems gay enough to-night," Redney said.

She shook her head again. "I don't know whatever we 'll do."

He suggested: "Yuh don't get along with him any too smooth, yerself, do yuh?"

"Oh, well," she sighed. "You know—old married people—"

He cut in: "When were yuh married?" His tone was dispassionate and inquiring, but there was something under it that startled her.

She gave him a quick look.

He said: "Uh?" His face was blank. "Yuh said yuh were old married people. Yuh must 'a' married young."

"O-oh!" She busied herself in a suspiciously close inspection of the mended socks. "Yes." She doubled a pair together, inside of themselves, in the customary