Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/69

 that?" She had phrased and spoken the question before she realized that it was a tacit admission.

"Oh, I guessed it," he acknowledged. "You see, it's like this. Every morning and afternoon you go by Burns, Dolan & Co.'s plumbing-shop, where I work. I'm in the cellar, mostly."

"In the cellar?" she repeated, dazedly.

"Ye-ah. And as you never came by Saturdays I took it that you were a teacher around the corner. I never saw anything but your feet—"

"My feet?" She was growing more and more bewildered. Was the man insane?

"Maybe I'm bulling the story. Anyhow, it was like this." He gained confidence as he went along. The terror in her eyes died away and vanished completely as he described his impersonal observations from the cellar window; and when he reached the climax—her passing from starboard to port while he stood in the waist—she lay back and laughed, first softly, then with full rollick. William laughed, too. "Funny kind of a game for a gink like me to play—huh?"

"I never heard anything like it! You are a real Sherlock Holmes!" Her attitude was no longer aloof. She was ready to hear anything this unusual young man had to say.

"Say, that guy Doyle can put 'em across the plate, can't he? I read him twice a year, along with Kipling."

"You enjoy reading?"

"Sure. Maybe I read too much. I don't know how to sift 'em. I read Dumas a good deal,