Old Dan didn't seem to get it for a minute; then a whiteness kind of crept around his lips, and his eyes, from Regan, seemed to circuit in a queer, wistful way about the yards, and fix finally on the roundhouse in front of him; and then he lifted his peaked cap, in the way he had of doing, and scratched near his ear where the hair was. He hit Regan pretty hard with what he said.
"Regan," he said, "there's two weeks yet to the end of the month. Don't tell her, Regan, and don't you let the boys tell her—there's two weeks she don't need to worry. I'd kind of like to have her have them two weeks."
Regan nodded—there weren't any words that would come, and he couldn't have spoken them if there had.
"Yes," said old Dan, sort of whispering to himself, "I'd kind of like to have her have them two weeks."
Regan cleared his throat, pulled at his mustache, swore under his breath, and cleared his throat again.
"What'll you do, Dan—afterwards?"
Old Dan straightened up, looked at Regan—and smiled.
"I dunno," he said, shaking his head and smiling. "I dunno; but it'll be all right. We'll get along somehow." His eyes shifted to the roundhouse again. "I guess I'd better be getting over to the 304," he said—and turned abruptly away.
Regan watched him go, watched the overalled figure with a slight shoulder stoop cross the turntable, watched until the other disappeared inside the roundhouse doors; and then he turned and walked slowly across the tracks and uptown toward his boarding house. "Don't tell her"—the words kept reiterating themselves insistently—"don't let the boys tell her."
"I guess they won't," said Regan, muttering fiercely to himself. "I guess they won't."