Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/49

Rh "Now, if I was to go out and another man—say, a younger an' more experienced one—was t' take my place I—I—well, I don't know who'd be at the happix pretty soon, but one on 'em would."

(A Voice: "Mrs. Higgins is jest out the door listnin' all the time!")

"She's gone to Shepperd's for starch—an' eye out for a likely second, maybe. My ole woman is fore-seein'."

"But what about Billy here?"

"Well, if I died, an' Billy an' Lizzie gets married. I know where Billy would be—where I left—for a while at least. And anyways, supposin' I didn't die. I know who'd be at the happix, expecially if it was a girl. An' so on with the triangles of life; children, and more children, allus crowdin' the happexes, an' the old people bustin' themselves to death shorin' up the legs or bases of the ekel try hangles of life, till they give out of old age, and then summon comes down as often as not."

"Life is a triangle," once said Brennan, the silent semi-foreman (a Reynold's Newspaper reader), to the surprise of all, who had dropped in, in the absence of his wife and her mother from the village, to get his bottle filled. "Life is a tryangle. You're right there, Higgins, and you and me and the rest of us in hundreds of English villages are shoring up the props. And they're comin' down, Higgins!" and he went out.

They stared at one another, and "Wot's come over to Brennan to-night," they grumbled. "He must be gettin' speerits from somewhere.