Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/61

 At these he promptly turned, and made a face—an indescribable contortion of the features, in which he expressed all his old-time, unutterable, and implacable contempt for the softer sex.

At that the little girl with the yellow braids bobbed down her head and drew back, abashed. Recovering herself, she continued on her journey erratically down the sidewalk, her otherwise strange hesitations and gyrations being due to a supreme effort to avoid each and every crevice, for, she artlessly sang to herself as she went:

As she passed in front of the bake-shop she came to a stop, and gazed pensively up at the iron railing which guarded the little show-window. Her thoughts were traveling back to the winter day when, in ecstatic contemplation of the sweets within, she had absent-mindedly essayed to suck the frosty iron—and had straightway stuck to it.

Already she saw signs of a new stock for that old, alluring window. And she was a