Because the club bored him he took to spending his evenings with Jack Crooks. There was a cosey little room with an open fire, a piano, big, worn, friendly easy-chairs, and an atmosphere of home. This was Jack’s particular den, to which none but her best friends penetrated. Sometimes Crooks would drop in, smoke a cigar, and spin yarns of logging in the early days; but more often they were alone. Jack played well and sang better; but she made no pretence of entertaining Joe. He was welcome; he might sit and smoke and say nothing if he chose. She sang or played or read or created mysterious things with linen, needle, and silk, as if he were one of the household. On the other hand, if he preferred to talk she was usually equally willing.
One night she sat at the piano and picked minor chords. Joe, sunk in the chair he particularly affected, scowled at the fire and thought of logs. Lately he had thought of little else. He wanted to get back and see the work actually going on. Jack half turned and looked at him.
“He needs cheering up,” she said. “He’s thinking of her still.”
“What’s that?” said Joe with a start.
“’Tis better to have loved and lost,” she quoted mockingly. “Brace up, Joe.” She often teased him about his temporary infatuation with Edith Garwood, knowing that it did not hurt. She swung about to the piano and her fingers crashed into the keys:
“Whin I was jilted by Peggy Flynn,
The heart iv me broke, an’ I tuk to gin;
An’ I soaked me sowl both night an’ day
While worrukin’ on the railwa-a-a-y.
“Arrah-me, arrah-me, arrah-me, ay,
Arrah-me, arrah-me, arrah-me, ay,
Oh, sorra th’ cint I saved of me pay
While worrukin’ on the railwa-a-a-y.
“But in eighteen hundred an’ seventy-three
I went an’ married Biddy McGee,
An’ th’ foine ould woman she was to me
While worrukin’ on the railwa-a-a-y.
“We’ll omit the next thirteen stanzas, Joe. See what your fate might have been:
æIn eighteen hundred an’ eighty-siven,
Poor Biddy died an’ she went to Hiven;
An’ I was left wid kids eliven
Worrukin’ on the railwa-a-a-y.”
“Great Scott, Jack, where did you pick up that old come-all-ye?” Joe interrupted. “You sing it like an Irish section hand.”
“I learned it from one. He was a good friend of mine. Do you want the rest of the verses? There are about seventy, I think.”