e, and the food helped, to stop her tears. It was the
strong coffee, at last, that brought her back her voice. "If it'd b'en
_him_, he'd 'a' gone an' got drunk," she said, wiping her cheeks with
her napkin. "The men have the best of it. Us women have to take it all
starin' sober."

"They're no more than children," Mrs. Byrne replied, "an' they're to be
treated as such. Sure, Cregan couldn't live without yuh. He'd have no
buttons to his pants in a week."

"An' him!" Mrs. Cregan cried. "Iver, since the Raypublicuns got licked,
there's be'n no gettin' on with him at all. Thim Sunday papers 've
toorned his head. He's all blather about his rights an' his wrongs. Th'
other moornin' didn't I try to get on his bus from the wrong side o' the
crossin', an' he bawls at me: 'Th' other side! Th' other side! Yuh're no
better than any one ilse!' An' I had to chase through the mud after him!
The little wizened runt! He's talkin' like an arnachist! An' that's why
he smashed me dish. He'll have no one say 'No' to 'im.... Ah, Mrs.
Byrne, niver marry a man older than yersilf."

"Thank yuh," Mrs. Byrne replied with hoarse sarcasm. "I'm not likely to,
at my age." She added, consolingly: "Cregan's young fer his years.
Drivin' a Fift' Avenah bus is fine, preservin', outdoor work."

"It is _that!_" And Mrs. Cregan's tone remarked that the fact was the
more to be deplored. "He'll be crankier an' crabbeder the older he
grows." She dipped to her coffee and swallowed hard.

Mrs. Byrne had screwed up her eyes to squint at an idea that could not
well be looked in the face. When she spoke it was to say slyly: "God
forbid! But they do go off sometimes in a puff. He looks as if he'd live
fer long enough, thank Heaven. But yuh never can tell."

[Illustration]

Mrs. Cregan blinked, held her hand for a moment, and then began hastily
to fill her mouth with food. The silence that ensued was long enough to
take on an appearance of guilt.

It was long enough, too, for Mrs. Byrne to "contrive a procedure."

"Yuh never can tell," she began, "unless yuh have doin's with the
devil--like them gipsies that see what's comin' by lookin' in the flat
o' yer hand. There's one o' them aroun' the corner, an' they say she
told Minnie Doyle the name o' the man she was to marry. An' he married
her, at that!" Mrs. Cregan looked blank. Mrs. Byrne leaned forward to
her. "I never whispered it to a livin' soul but yerself--but it was her
told Mrs. Gunn that her last was