Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/64

52 The next time she called in One Hundred and Third Street she examined the bells of all the apartment houses in the block, and when she came to "McCarty" she muttered: "There y' are, are yuh? If I thought yuh were up there now—but I s'pose yuh 're at work. The devil take yuh. Do yuh go out nights, I wonder. Huh! I see meself! I 'd look nice!" And turning her back resolutely, she walked off with her chin up.

Naturally, she said nothing to Larry of that visit, and he had no suspicion of her duplicity when she went out on the following Saturday evening to confession—it being the eve of the first Sunday of the month—and took the subway north. "I 'll tell no lies," she assured herself, "but I 'd better see her first—an' confess after." And when Miss McCarty, alone in the flat, received her with a well-controlled but evident surprise, she took the upper hand in a manner of self-justification, and demanded: "Now then! What is it all about? Tell me that, will yuh? What 's wrong between yuh? Why have yuh thrown down the poor boy?"

Miss McCarty had, of course, "thrown him down" because she was too proud to intrude upon any family that did not welcome her, and Mrs. Regan, by her manner at that first meeting, had most obviously intended her to understand that she was not welcome.

"Won't you sit down?" she asked calmly.

Mrs. Regan sat down while she was replying that she could not do so, that Larry thought she was at church, that she must hurry away, that he was ill, that he was