tration: "'YOUR HOUSE, IS IT? I'LL SHOW YEH WHOSE HOUSE IT IS!'"]

II

It was the first time that Mrs. Byrne had ever sat down in any public
restaurant, except the eating-halls at Coney Island (where she went with
"basket parties") or the ice-cream "parlors" at Fort George. And she
glanced about her at tiled walls and mosaic floors with a furtiveness
that was none the less critical for being so sly. "It's eatin' in a
bathroom we are," she whispered. "An' will yuh look at the cup yonder.
The sides of it are that thick there's scarce room fer the coffee in it!
Well, well! It do beat the Dutch! They're drawin' the drink out of a
boiler big enough fer wash day." The approach of a waitress silenced
her. When she saw that Mrs. Cregan was not going to speak, she looked up
at the girl with a bargain-counter keenness. "Have y' any pancakes fit
t' eat? How much are they? Ten cents! Fer how many? Fer three pancakes?
Fer three! D'yuh hear that?" she appealed to Mrs. Cregan. "Come home
with me, that's a good woman. It's a sin to pay it. Three cents fer a
pancake! Aw, come along out o' this. Ten cents! We c'u'd get two loaves
o' bread fer the money an' live on it fer a week!"

But Mrs. Cregan was beyond the reach of practicalities, and she ordered
her buckwheat cakes and coffee with an air that was mournfully distrait.
Mrs. Byrne made a vain attempt to get her own cakes from the waitress
for five cents, and then resigned herself to the senseless extravagance.
"Yuh'll not make yer own livin' an' eat the likes o' this," she
grumbled asthmatically. "Yuh'd better be savin' yer money."

Mrs. Cregan was looking at the thick china with a sort of aggrieved
despondence. (It was almost the expression of a bereaved mother looking
at one of her neighbor's children and thinking it a healthy, ugly brat
whom nobody would have missed!) She stared at the bare walls and the
bare tables of the restaurant, and found the place, by comparison with
her own cozy flat, as unhome-like as the waiting-room of a railroad
station--the waiting-room of a railroad station when you have said
good-bye to your past and the train has not yet arrived to carry you to
your future.

As her pancakes were served to her, she bent over the plate to hide a
tear that trickled down her nose. It splashed on the piece of food that
she raised to her mouth. She ate it--tear and all.

"An' them no bigger than the top of a tomato can!" Mrs. Byrne was
muttering.

Mrs. Cregan at