Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/62

50 What 's wrong with yuh? If yuh want the girl, why don't yuh go get her? God give her joy o' yuh! Yuh 're worse 'n a bear with a sore ear!"

"What 're you talking about?" He glared at her. "Who said I wanted her? I 'm done with her—and she knows it! I would n't look at her if she—" He choked wrathfully.

"Well, then," she complained, "what is it? What 's the matter? I can do nothin' with yuh."

"Who asked you to? Leave me alone. I 'm all right. Only you 're always making out that I 'm—she—as if I was gone nutty about her. I don't care a darn about her. I 'm as good as she is. If she thinks we 're not, that 's her lookout. She can't bother me for a minute!"

"Ach," Mrs. Regan said, "I dunno what yuh 're talkin' about. I 've said nothin' about yuh bein' nutty—though, Lord knows, y' act like it."

He swallowed the insult—turned suddenly dispirited—and they let the quarrel lapse into a worried gloom until some fresh misunderstanding should arouse it again.

It summed up for her, before long, into the conclusion that the boy was ill, that he was unhappy, that he was eating out his heart, and ruining his digestion, because of a fool of a girl with whom he had quarreled. "They neither o' them 've got sense enough to know what they want! Some one ought to take an' bump their heads together fer them. Drat them both! They 'll drive me out o' me wits.… If I had her