Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/50

38 him take it and live with it. There was no accounting for tastes. Larry! Of all boys in the world! Well, live and learn. Live and learn.

She plumped herself down in her rocking chair by the window and waited indignantly for them to come. She looked very sour, very stiff and forbidding. Hard work had kept her thin and angular. She snorted and muttered to herself. And she was still in this frame of mind when the arrival of Larry and his "girl" brought her to her feet. "Now then," she said. "Now then."

There entered a meekly dressed young woman, about thirty years old, tall, in black, with a plain pale face and a subdued manner. "Miss McCarty," Larry introduced her, very proud and somewhat apprehensive. ("God help us," Mrs. Regan said afterward, "I thought 'twas a joke he was playin'. She was nothin' at all to look at. An' old enough to marry two of him!") He did not notice how his mother received Miss McCarty; he was only anxious about how Miss McCarty would be impressed. And the mother received her as a rival who, at first sight, disproved all the formidable reports concerning her; and Miss McCarty showed no more impression than is indicated by the deepening of reserve.

She had a broad, flat forehead; and her eyes were set under it, far apart and colorless, with a quiet despondency of expression. Her mouth had the same flatness—a wide mouth, thin-lipped and full of the character of a woman who has a mind of her own. When she sat