Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/371

359 "gods" this sentimentality was "dead slow"; they wished what Mickey wished—to see "somethin' doin'."

Mickey abandoned himself to his disappointment, and fell back in his seat. "I wisht we had n't 'a' come."

His father nodded. The loving wife on the stage was a fiction that had been largely discredited for him by his marital experience. "'S all hot air, that," he said. "They just does it to make out the show."

"D' yuh t'ink dhey 'd give us back the price?"

Mr. Flynn shook his head. "Keep yer shirt on. This 's on'y the first act."

"Aw, gee! I wisht we had n't 'a' come."

To little Mickey, as to most of the others in that gallery, Saturday night at the "show" was the reward of a week of self-denial; and to Mickey it was more, for he expected to be well punished by his mother when he should come slinking home at midnight to meet her angry 'Now whayr 've yeh been?" He had no hope that his father would be able to protect him; it had been tacitly understood between them that for the sake of family peace Mrs. Flynn should not be told how the elder Mickey had joined in the truancy. But Mickey had hoped to go to bed with a dazzled soul in his smarting body; and now he foresaw that he would have no sweetly shudderful remembrance of murder and crime to ease his aches.

He slid down dejectedly on his back-bone. "Dhis 's slower 'n church!"

It was a remark that appealed to his father—for