Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/90

 Pap knew what it meant when she spoke and looked that way. <A switch engine couldn't move her.

Pap went to the office and helped himself to one of the best cigars in the case, which was no great drain on the finances of the establishment. He sat on the porch smoking. Mrs. Cowgill could see him, sitting there gloomy and disgruntled, as much out of sorts over her harboring a common jerry in that house as if he had been called on to share his bed with a stranger.

Louise came to the parlor door, looked in, and started away.

"Was you lookin' for something, Louise?" Mrs. Cowgill called.

"The rest of the Kansas City paper." Louise displayed part of it, with a nod and friendly smile to Banjo, who waved his hand airily.

"I ain't seen it," Mrs. Cowgill returned indifferently, "but I expect Myron's got it off in a corner somewhere. That man he'll read anything; he'll let business go any day to set down with a book or a paper and read."

Mrs. Cowgill was censorious and severe. She had no pride in her husband's facility with an accomplishment that was only a business adjunct to her, and loosely grasped at the best. She had heard Myron boast that he could read his carpenter's square, once in an argument with a timber carpenter on a bridge gang. Myron had meant to prove by that assertion that he was an aristocrat among carpenters, one who had learned his trade by a long apprenticeship and could "lay out" a house. It had become a prodpole in his