Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/388

376 stiff derby down on his ears. He had one hand thrust into the breast of his overcoat at the aperture of a missing button and his elbows were pressed in against his sides; so that he seemed to be hugging himself against the cold, shrunken in on himself in an unwilling and shivering discomfort.

Yet, when he stopped in the light of a hall-lamp to look up at the number on the door, a package showed in the crook of his elbow to explain his posture, and about the wrappings of that package there shone the gilt twine of the bonbon counter. His lips were contracted with the cold as if to the pucker of a whistle, and his simple face, glowing with the nip of the wind, was the sort from which an always cheerful melody might be expected continuously to pipe.

He came up the steps to pick out the name of "Connors" over an electric bell, and he pressed the button heavily with the flat of his thumb. The door-lock clicked. He wiped his feet on the mat for a moment of hesitation, and then blew apologetically into the thumb-crotch of a closed fist as he entered; but these were the only signs of any inward agitation at the prospect of making a social call, uninvited, on a girl who did not know his name, and who might possibly not even remember his face. A little old woman in a shawl was waiting for him in a doorway on the second landing. He asked cautiously, from the top step: "'S Miss Connors live here?" "She does." She peered out to see that he was a stranger. "I 'll tell her." She disappeared.