Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/400

388 "God Hess yeh, boy," she whispered tearfully. "Don't mind Maggie now. It 's the way with the girls. She 'll marry yeh when the time comes. Don't doubt it."

He fled down the stairs in such haste that he almost fell on the landing, but when he reached the sidewalk he stopped to turn up the collar of his overcoat and solemnly shook his head before he went on again.

Though he came every night—and even accepted an invitation to supper Sunday evening—he never had much to say for himself. Mrs. Connors received him at the door, maternally, and made herself busy about him, and followed him down the hall to the kitchen. Her daughter, propped up among the pillows in an arm-chair by the stove, greeted him with a flippant "Hello, Mike!" although she knew his name was Tom. He would grin and reply, respectfully: "How 're yuh feelin'?"

"Oh, great!" she would say sarcastically. "Don't I look it?"

She was, in fact, pathetically thin and faded.

"That 's right," he would insist. "I guess we 'll have 't warm pretty soon now."

He would sit down at the opposite side of the room and smile and listen and watch her. She had given up teasing him about coming; she accepted him as one of the family and chatted with her mother about their neighbors and their household affairs without making any change of topic when he came in.

When she was too weak to leave her room she called