Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/23

 took no pains to hide the peculation, as she might have done with a little adroit adjustment and tucking under about the ears. There was a look of alertness and searching in her face, as if she lived a continual quest for something that she expected to spring up in the road ahead of her and elude her in the end. Some said it was money; there were more kindly souls who believed it was only rest.

The man beside her was not much of an example as men go, although he had a personality that generally drew a second look, especially when he spoke. He was a small man wearing a sandy little mustache; with a sharp little nose that seemed to have been pinched while in a plastic state just above the nostrils, making an indenture there which gave the organ a peculiar aspect of eagerness when he breathed. His head was broad, somewhat flat on top, well suited to the long line of parting and the cowlick that he had trained into his abundant black locks. A flowing crepe necktie adorned the low collar of his broad-striped shirt, the glory of which was not shadowed by either coat or vest.

There was a rich note in his voice that suggested a song; laughter seemed to lie so near the surface of him that he had only to open his mouth for it to appear in his eyes, slily, provokingly, like a chipmunk at its hole. For Banjo Gibson was a man who looked at life as a sort of one-sided joke, and humanity as an arrangement of comical figures paraded for his diversion. There was nothing much in him but a laugh.

"I'm glad to see you back again, Banjo," Mrs. Cow-