Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/362

350 bedroom, as large as a clothes-closet, opened off it; and he could see the white coverlet of the bed in the shadows, and a spray of church palm on the wall above the pillow.

He sat down, in silence, on a chair with a perforated seat that had blistered and peeled with age. She set to work to light a fire in the rusty kitchen stove, pottering about busily, chatting with a voluble hospitality, showing him the brown photographs which she kept on the mantel-shelf, and apologizing for the disorder in which he found the room, with its tubs and its boilers.

He looked at the plaster on the wall, cracked and yellowed with steam. Once or twice he coughed, as if he were about to speak, but she did not wait for him.

Finally—when she had turned her back to put a pinch of tea in. the little brown teapot—he said: "If old Farrell was alive—"

She turned on him. "Sure, man," she said, "he died in Ireland—"

He caught at his hat as it fell from the table, "I meant Jim—Jim Farrell." He was red. "We called him 'old' Farrell."

"Name of Heaven, why?" she cried. "He was n't but twinty!" He shook his head. She laughed at him. "An' if he was livin' this day," she said, "what'd he be to me?"

"He 'd have his pension. A dollar a day an' more."

"An' it 's needin' it he 'd be," she replied. "He was near 's old as mesilf." She poured water in the teapot and set it on the steaming kettle.