Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/315

Rh "What 're y' at?"

"Peelin' pitaties."

"What 's makin' yeh so noisy?"

Annie looked down at her hands without answering.

"Why don't yeh sing no more these days?" The voice was querulous.

Annie poised a potato to her knife and blushed to the tops of her ears. "It 's too warrm," she said.

A pan banged in the kitchen. "Warrm, d' yeh call it? I call it drippin' danged hot!"

The girl did not reply; and the cook, after grumbling to herself for a while, resigned herself to a stifled silence.

A delivery wagon came clattering up the street, swung into the gutter, and pulled up with a jerk; and Annie dropped her potato and watched eagerly. When she saw a strange man climb down the wheel, she put her dish-pan on the deep window-sill and stood back from the light to regard him with a look of distress. He bustled down into the area and threw all his weight on a tug at the bell. "Glory be!" the cook cried to her. "What 's that?"

She did not answer. She went to the door and took the basket without raising her eyes from it.

"The grocery man!" the cook greeted her in the kitchen. "Does he want to pluck the bell out be the root! That's not Jawn?"

Annie shook her head. "No," she said vacantly, and turned to empty the basket on the serving-table.