Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/397

Rh cheeks, her eyes fixed on him in a stare that slowly changed from an expression of surprise that was almost stupefaction to one of wonder and compassion that was not unmixed with shame.

"I guess it 's kind o' cold out, ain't it?" she said at last. "I wish 't 'd hurry up an' get warm again."

He replied that he did not mind the cold; and the rest of the evening passed in a constrained conversation, chiefly about his work in the wholesale house and hers at the "lunch counter." When he rose to leave her she did not meet his eyes.

She hurried off to bed on the plea that she was tired. Her mother heard her coughing wakefully far into the night.

On the following evening, it was almost nine o'clock before Larkin arrived; and he was received by Mrs. Connors with a suspicious manner that thawed as soon as she saw how he took to heart the news that Maggie had been worse all day and had gone to bed.

"Ain't she gettin' better?" he whispered.

Her under lip trembled; her little sunken eyes filled. She shook her head.

He took a bag of peanuts from his pocket and laid them on the table. "Ain't she any better?"

"Not a bit," she said, under her voice. "Not a bit. An' I 've had the doctor ev'ry blessed day, an' drugs, an' dainties that 's eat up the little bit I 'd put by for us—ev'ry cent of it. I 'm at my wits' ends. I am that."

She began to pour out all the anxieties that she had