Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/63

Rh here, now, I 'd give her a talkin' to she 'd not ferget to her dyin' day!"

But she did not have her there; and she had not the faintest suspicion of where to find her—until, one day, when she had been to call on a neighbor who had recently moved to One Hundred and Third Street, she told Larry of the visit and he said: "Hundred and Third Street! Whereabouts?" She replied: "Near the subway. First block east." He said: "I don't want you to be fooling around there. It 'll look as if we were—" And she remembered that Larry and the girl had come down from One Hundred and Third Street in "twenty minutes."

"Foolin' around there!" she said to herself. "Why should I fool around there! It 's yerself that 'll do anny foolin' around that 's to be done, me lad. I 'd look nice goin' up there fer yuh, tryin' to patch up quarrels I know nothin' at all about. I 'd look nice."

Anyone who understood Mrs. Regan would know that this fiercely contemptuous repudiation of any intention of "foolin' around" Miss McCarty was the first sign of her purpose to do just that. The boy had begun to look bad about the eyes. When his face was in repose it took a worried wrinkle between the eyebrows. He had moments when he was so meek that he was as pathetic to her as if he were teething. She could not endure it. "If I knowed what was wrong between them," she told herself, "’t w'u'd not be so bad. I 'd like to see that girl. Drat her! I 'd put it to her straight."