Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/250

 even if some people don't think so.” As a matter of fact, he had once heard of a man using a load of coal to anchor his wife when she talked of moving.

Annie piped up: “I don’t see that that ’d make any difference.”

“Would n’t it then,” Mrs. Cook snubbed her. “That shows all you know about it.”

Annie was used to snubs. She went to the oven for Barney’s plate of potato cakes, unresentful. His mother was pouring his tea.

“It ’ud do the trick,” Cooney said. “It w'ud that. It ’s a great contrivance. It is surely.” He added, in a lower tone, to himself and his food: “But where ’d I get the money fer it?”

Mrs. Cook put down her tea-pot with a hump. “Have you given all of it over to them girls?”

“Yes ’m,” Cooney admitted.

“Have you kep’ none of it fer yurself?”

He blinked at her, under his shaggy eyebrows, guiltily apologetic. “No’m,” he said.