Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/390

378 "Have yuh?" she laughed, dropping her hands.

He nodded. "We thought p'raps yuh 'd like some chocolates." He lifted his hat to uncover the candy box.

From the way he did it, it was plain how much he had counted on the effect. She laughed. "Oh—oh, thanks," she said, and came in to take the box from him. She had a kitchen pallor, but a spot of color began to blush out, like rouge, on either cheek-bone.

As soon as she had relieved him of the package, he backed away from her and took refuge in a chair, sitting down in his overcoat, with his hat in his hands.

"Won't yuh take off yer things?" she asked, in the voice of social politeness, from a flat palate, somewhat through the nose.

He shook his head. "I jus' dropped in to see how yuh were." He looked around the room in a manner of being very much at his ease.

"Oh, I 'm pretty well, I guess," she said, with a nervous laugh that was followed by a fit of coughing. She sat down with the box in her lap and began to open it.

He frowned at the cough. "That 's right," he said at last. Yuh don't want to go back too soon after the grip." "I guess mine was nemmonia, too," she replied, with an air of pride in it. "The doctor says my lungs ain't strong."

He nodded at a crayon portrait of Mrs. Connors on the far wall. "That 's what they tol' us."