Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/355

Rh "I scart him off," he apologized, and touched the slouched brim of his felt hat in a somewhat military-salute to her. He was almost as gray as she was herself.

"Sure, I 'd nuthin' to give the poor thing," she said, peering up at him against the sun.

He put his hand in the bagged pocket of his coat. "I 've some goobers with me," he said, drawing out three of them. "I fed most of 'em to the monkeys. They 're hungry these days, ma'am."

She studied him with a puckered eye. He was undeniably "well-preserved," as she would have said; and, though his mustache was thin and gray, there was blood and color, in his tanned cheeks, in little scarlet veins in the skin.

He whistled softly to the squirrel that was spying on them from the grass, and stooped to hold out a nut to it in a brown hand, invitingly. Mrs. Dolan took her bundle from the seat and placed it on her knees. "Yeh 'll have to sit down fer 'm," she said. "They 're as timid as the mice."

She did not explain that she was on terms of friendship with all the mice of her tenement house.

"Thank, yuh, ma'am." He sat down on the edge of the bench, with a certain clumsy bashfulness, and bent over with the nut. The squirrel was erect in the grass. "Like a gopher," he said. He added in a moment. "Out West, ma'am," since she did not seem to understand. He glanced over his shoulder at her to find her smiling absent-mindedly at the squirrel. "They dig the