Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/242

 bed, he was not looking forward to his homecoming with any eager anticipation. Home, of course, should be the place where a working man may talk of himself and his day inexhaustibly, with the assurance of a sympathetic hearing. It was just this credulous ear of interest that Barney knew he would not find.

On the first day of his work with Babbing, he had told his mother that he had been engaged as an office boy—because he was afraid that she might object to his being a detective. Later, when he was forced to tell her the truth, he had wound his way into his confession with such unconvincing circumlocution, and he had so guiltily beclouded the point when he came to it, that she had accepted his story in a large silence that evidently covered a multitude of thoughts. Then he began to come home full of enthusiastic accounts of his daily exploits; and the more calmly she received them, the more amazing he made them. Once or twice, when he was romancing, she interrupted him to talk to his sister Annie. But she never