Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/51

Rh down she folded in her lap a pair of immaculate hands, large, firm, very white and evidently very capable. Her physical largeness was obviously of the same quality of graceful strength.

"Well now!" Mrs. Regan said at last. "Will yuh tell me somethin'? Wherever did yuh meet?" Her excitement gave her voice the shrillness that made her sound shrewish to those who did not know her.

"Down-town," Larry answered, with his eyes still fixed on the girl.

"Do yuh work?" the mother asked her.

"Oh yes," she said, "I 've always worked." And she spoke in the voice that had glamored Larry.

It was not the voice of a dialect; it was not even markedly the plaintive intonation of the Celt. It was a rich full breathing of deepened vowels and blurred consonants that put a sort of pastoral gentleness and charm on every word—as soft as an Irish mist on the green undulations of an Irish landscape.

"What do yuh do?" Mrs. Regan demanded.

Larry answered for her: "She 's a manicurist."

"A— What 's that?" she cried, annoyed because the girl had an appearance of ignoring her.

Larry laughed nervously. It was evident Miss McCarty did not understand the brusk kindliness of his mother's inquiries. "Never mind what it is," he said. "What diff'rence does it make?"

Mrs. Regan contained herself by folding her arms upon her pride. "True enough," she said. "What diff'rence? 'Tis none o' my bus'ness. None at all." And