Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/294

282 deft way of housewives. "We 've been married a long time."

"Yuh 've said it twice, so it must be true," be remarked, with his usual brazen calm. "Been a gay life, eh? Enjoyed ev'ry minute of it?"

She regarded him with a pathetic doubtfulness of expression, bewildered by worry and not sure of his sarcasm. "Gay?" she said—and got no farther.

There was a look in his eyes that had nothing to do with his words—one of those indescribable significances of scrutiny which do not express thought but show where it is concealed. On the instant, with a shifting of the eyelid, it was gone. "Well, cheer up," he said. "The worst is yet to come." And, shrugging up the tray-straps on his shoulders, he went out, to meet the small attendance of visitors who were following the Professor from the lower end of the hall.

She sat looking after him, blankly, with the socks in her hand, weighed down by an apprehension which his parting words had not allayed.

The hall on which he had issued was the width, length, and height of a single Bowery shop—and that is narrow, long, and low. It was dismally lit with a half-dozen gas-jets that did not seem to thrive in the exhausted air; and under these jets, on platforms along the walls, sat a half-dozen entertainers, exhibitors, and living curiosities waiting for the public to be drawn to them by the Professor's "spiel." In a double row down the