Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/84

 *tion of active life. The street grew stiller and stiller. She heard the voice of a newsboy, far out of his usual haunts, crying an extra. She could not distinguish the words in which he bawled his tidings, and she thought nothing of it. One of Jimmy's few rules was that she was not to read the papers. But, when the heavy voice was gone, she found that it had had a strange, depressing effect upon her; she longed for Jimmy to come; the day had dragged itself by so slowly, and something of its somberness had stolen into her soul. She sighed, and leaned her chin on her arm; her back was growing tired, and beginning to ache. Then suddenly she heard horses' hoofs, and the roll of a carriage in the street. She rose and leaned far out of the window to welcome him. The cab drew up; it stopped; the door opened. But the man who got out was not Jimmy. It was Father Daugherty. She knew him the instant she saw the fuzzy old high hat thrust out of the cab, and caught the greenish sheen of the shabby cassock that stood away from the fringe of white hair on his neck in such an ill-fitting, ill-becoming fashion. The old man did not look up, but tottered across the sidewalk.