"I get eight t'ousandt, huh?"
"Yes."
A smile transfigured the heavy, bony face.
"Py Gott!" he said. "Dot's goodt, hain't it?"
XIX
Late in April they argued the motion for a new trial, and on the last day of the term Sharlow announced his decision, overruling the motion, and entered judgment in Koerner's favor. Though Marriott knew that Ford would carry the case up on error, he had, nevertheless, won a victory, and he felt so confident and happy that he decided to go to Koerner and tell him the good news. The sky had lost the pale shimmer of the early spring and taken on a deeper tone. The sun was warm, and in the narrow plots between the wooden sidewalks and the curb, the grass was green. The trees wore a gauze of yellowish green, the first glow of living color they soon must show. A robin sprang swiftly across a lawn, stopping to swell his ruddy breast. Marriott made a short cut across a commons, beyond which the spire of a Polish Catholic church rose into the sky. The bare spots of the commons, warmed by the sun, exhaled the strong odor of the earth, recalling memories of other springs. Some shaggy boys, truants, doubtless, too wise to go to school on such a day, were playing a game of base-ball, writhing and contorting their little bodies, raging and screaming and swearing at one another in innocent imitation of the profanity of their fathers and elder brothers.
Koerner, supported by one crutch, was leaning over his front gate. He was recklessly bareheaded; his white, disordered hair maintained its aspect of fierceness, and, as Marriott drew near, he turned on him his great, bony face, without a change of expression.
"Well, Mr. Koerner, this is a fine day, isn't it?" said Marriott as he took the old man's hand. "I guess the spring's here at last."
Koerner took his constant pipe from his lips, raised his eyes and made an observation of the heavens.
"Vell, dot veat'er's all right." As he returned the amber stem to his yellow teeth, Marriott saw that the blackened bowl of the pipe was empty. The old man let Marriott in at his gate, then swinging about, went to the stoop, lowered himself from his crutches and sat down, with a grunt at the effort.