Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/398

386 been restraining for months. He listened, blinking at the bag of peanuts.

"Thank God, I got my own health, but I 'm gettin' old. I 'm not good fer much. Our frien's 's all got troubles of their own. Heavens knows—poor souls. It 's a bad way we 'll be in if Maggie 's never to get strong again. A bad way." She sat down and knotted her hard old hands together in her lap. "An' her such a bright girl—poor child."

She sighed and shook her head. He turned his hat over in his hands and studied it. There was a miserable silence.

"How d' yuh do, Mr. Larkin," a voice chirruped from the door. He started at the sight of her peeping around the hanging at him. She laughed. "Yuh 're gettin' so fash'nable, I thought yuh were n't comin'."

"I was huntin' fer some peanuts," he confessed. "I could n't find a peddler."

"Peanuts!" she cried. "Wait 'll I get my wrapper on."

He turned to smile at Mrs. Connors.

"They 'll do her no hurt anyways," she conceded. "I wish 't was port wine, poor girl."

It was port wine, the next time he appeared; it was also calves' foot jelly. And though Miss Connors made merry over them, her mother was visibly won. She relieved him of his hat and made him take off his overcoat. And having intervened to save him from her daughter's teasings several times throughout the evening,