Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/394

382 the box and smiled as she crunched it. When her mother came in she bent down hastily to pick up the paper and gilt twine from the floor.

"Who was it?" Mrs. Connors asked.

"Oh, jus' a frien' of a fellah in the Pennsylvania offices," she said. "He sent me up some candy."

The following day she spent sitting at the closed window, wrapped in a shawl, the curl on her forehead done up in a twist of paper, watching what was doing in the street below her.

"I 'm awful busy," she said to her mother, as she hurried back to her post of observation after dinner. "I 'm movin' in across the road."

She nibbled chocolates. She sat and frowned or sat and smiled. Once, her mother, who was working over the laundry tubs, heard her singing and peeped in, to see her dusting the room. And when night fell she dressed in her black lace gown that had no collar, and put a huge butterfly bow of black velvet in her hair.

"I 'll bet no one 'll come, now I 'm ready for them," she said humorously. "They 'd sooner catch me when I 'm lookin' a sight."

Larkin, however, came on the stroke of eight, and was so cordially received that he forgot, for the moment, to explain the parcel he had brought under his arm.

He did not remember it until after he was sitting down. "I thought I 'd better run up with it t'-night," he explained then. "She 's got to have it back