Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/175

 back it. To cheat, to lie, to borrow money and never pay it back, to break a promise, to play hooky on the job, to waste the pay-envelope across the bar while the landlady waited, to ogle women on the street, to hunt them for amusement—these things went against the straight, clean grain of him.

Women? he mused. He would never understand women, not if he had as many around him as King Solomon had and overtopped Methuselah in the matter of years. So she had run afoul of Norton Colburton, got her fingers in the cobweb, and the spider had nipped them? And then to run four thousand miles, with the idea of running sixteen thousand more! That was the real puzzle. To get rid of the attentions of men like Colburton women did not have to run any farther than the nearest police precinct. But twenty thousand miles! What was the idea?

He slumped forward on the rail.

Why did they do it? Sometimes they went astray for a great love; he could understand that. But what he could not understand was that ordinarily an automobile was enough, a necklace, maybe a little silk and a little fur to excite the envy of her friends. True, often the poor little shop-girl sold out for food and shoes; he could understand that, too. But the automobile? … No, there wasn't any mystery now; nearly all the little blocks of the puzzle fitted in their allotted places. An old story—God alone knew how old—the ancient man-and-woman story. A pinch of poverty,