Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/392

380 afternoons in the wagon—the smell of fresh bread always sweet on its worn shelves that were as clean and as warm as a baker's oven—the sun beating down on its heat-cracked top, and the yellowish-white nag, that knew its round of customers as well as he did, tacking from side to side of the road, unguided.

His whole manner puzzled her; and it was not to be the last time he was to leave her at a loss. He had one of those minds that seem to make stolid night marches and to arrive unexpectedly at the strangest conclusions without at all sharing the surprise they cause.

He groped in his overcoat pocket to draw out a yellowed photograph of his father's bake-shop, taken by some traveling photographer who made a specialty of "commercial business." In the doorway, Larkin was posed between his parents, in a pair of knickerbockers that came to the calves of his legs; and he had an air of acknowledging that though his father was the original owner of the trousers, his mother had made them over for him.

Miss Connors did not smile when he explained that his mother looked sleepy because she always sat up until the small hours of the morning to call the bakers to their work.

He had also a tintype of "Pipp" and himself, grinning self-consciously in the gummy smile of youth. "He 's pretty smart—Pipp," he said admiringly. "We ust to be in the same class at school, but he got away ahead of me."