Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/293

 had no preference. She was pretty; and generally it was the pretty ones who moved.

Two blocks farther on, before a house in one of the numbered streets, he drew up.

"Is this the place?"

"Yes."

She climbed down, ran up the steps, and rang the bell. The door opened shortly and she vanished into the hall. When the cartman laid the suit-case on top of the trunk he suggested that he wouldn't mind an extra ten cents for beer. It took "all th' water out o' yer hide, this weather."

He pocketed the tip and shuffled out of the house, out of her life, one of those shadow shapes which come and go without leaving the slightest impression on the memory.

The girl stood stock-still in the middle of the room until she heard the shiffle-shuffle of the poor old bag of bones that had once been a lively colt in the green fields. Into her tragic thoughts came strangely the thought of this horse. She had already forgotten the master, but she would always remember the horse. It was symbolical. Twenty years hence she would be like that, a bag of bones, all her spirit crushed, gray-haired, weak of eye, trembling. How distinct the dull portrait was!

All her life she had been poor; always she had grubbed. She had been denied the right of butterflies—to fly. Always they had been in debt. She had grown to dread the door-bell, for nine-tenths of the callers had been irascible bill-collectors, and the brunt of "shooing" them off