Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/314

302 whenever she was tired of her round of cooking, serving, and washing-up. She was an Irish girl; and her name was Annie Freel; and her cheeks were still as fresh as pinks from the breezes of Donegal. She had the physique of a milkmaid and a rustic gracefulness of good health that was almost beautiful by contrast with the background of Mrs. Henry's faded dining-room—a background of rusty steel engravings in tarnished gilt frames, hung on a yellowed wall-paper that made the whole room look as if the innumerable meals that had been served there had given it the complexion of a dyspeptic.

She was sitting beside the grated basement window, peeling potatoes into a dish-pan, but she kept an eye on the " area " and the street; and whenever the wheels of a wagon sounded on the pavement, she stopped her work to watch it pass behind the stone spindles of the area balustrade. The thermometer on the window frame marked 92 degrees, and her face was wet. There were heat rings under her eyes; and her eyebrows were drawn in a frown that made no wrinkle on a forehead that had never been broken to worry. Whenever she looked away from the window, she glanced anxiously at the clock; it marked a quarter past eleven, and the groceries had not come.

She let her hand fall idle into the cool water of the pan, and stared at the dust floating in the sunlight.

The cook called hoarsely from the kitchen: "Annie!" She started. "Yis?"