“It’s a darn shame about that house!” he exclaimed hotly. “Think of a place where Washington slept let go to rack and ruin that way and turned into a tenement for dagos! Any other town would buy it and keep it up decently. They’d be proud of it. Look at those windows—every blooming one broken and patched up with paper and stuff. It’s disgusting!”
“There’s two whole ones,” remarked McBride—“up-stairs to the left.”
“What do they amount to?” sniffed Cavvy. “It’s an accident they’re not busted like the rest, that’s all. I’ve half a mind to get after dad and see if he can’t wake up the mayor or somebody to do something about it. Why, when I was down at Mount Vernon last year—”
But Micky wasn’t particularly interested in Mount Vernon. He had heard all about that trip once and was more intent now on getting home to lunch than working up indignation on any subject. He listened carelessly, occasionally punctuating Cavvy’s tirade with a joke, but when they paused at his gate his mind had veered to another subject altogether.
“Come on down after lunch and bring your football,” he called, from half-way up the walk. “We’ll round up the bunch and have a little practice.”
“All right,” returned Cavanaugh absently.
Intent upon his new-born project, he presently burst into the Cavanaugh dining room, smoothing his rebellious crop with one hand and wiping the back of the other—which had escaped the towel—against his coat.
“Where’s dad?” he exclaimed, stopping short. “He hasn’t gone yet, has he?”
“He couldn’t get home to lunch to-day,” explained his mother quietly. “He telephoned that he’d have to stay at the mine.”
“That’s funny.” The boy dropped into his chair and unfolded his napkin. Almost never, except at the time of the big cave-in three years before, had his father failed to run home in the car for their mid-day meal. “There hasn’t been an accident, has there?”