Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/372

360 personal reasons. He wheezed and shook appreciatively. "Don't yuh like goin' to church?"

"Naw."

"Why don't yuh?"

"Why don't you?"

Mr. Flynn evaded the question. "Yer mother wants yuh to go."

"She wants you to go, too."

"I ust to go when I was your age."

The boy looked up at him with the sharpness of a self-sufficient little animal. "Did yuh like it?"

Some one behind them said: "Shut up, will yuh? Youse ain't the show." And Mr. Flynn coughed apologetically, glad of the interruption.

He had been vaguely aware, of late, that Mrs. Flynn was setting his son against him; and although she had been welcome to the care of the boy as long as he was an infant, now that he was growing old enough to take a side in the family quarrels, Mr. Flynn began naturally to feel a jealous interest in him. It was for this reason that they were at the theater together. And the elder Mickey smiled to find that in their dislike of church-going—as in their common contempt of feminine affection as it was misrepresented on the stage—he and his son were not divided. Mrs. Flynn, he assured himself, would not be able to make a mother's "Willie" of that boy; he had too much of his father in him.

Little Mickey had dropped his elbows to his knees again and craned his neck. A man with a villain's black mustache was attempting to interfere between the