Two dishes stood upon the kitchen table, one filled with loose tobacco, and the other with clay pipes; the air was heavy with smoke; the elder men leaned back and talked of times past; the younger grouped together and discussed current events of a sporting character. Larry sat upon the edge of the table, swinging his feet slowly and stirring up the tobacco with the yellow tipped stem of a pipe, a thoughtful look upon his face.
“It’s a foine lot ye hav for him at the Holy Cross,” said Clancy, “marble at the head an’ feet, an’ iron rails all about it.”
“That so? I never seen it,” Larry had answered.
But he had seen another grave, away near the fence, in the same cemetery—a narrow, neglected grave, flat and bare, with a wooden cross above it—a grave that lay at the end of a long row of others, the cramped resting places of poor wretches whose lives had been as cramped, and as bare, and as flat.
“Wid his side face to’ard ye, he luks like the gran’father,” said O’Hara, lowly.
“Is it loike old Larry?” said Tim Burns.
“No; the other.”
“Old Cohen, thin. Sure, now that I t’ink av it, he do. But thin he hav the blood in him, an’ why not?”
“D’yez raymember owld Aaron, Clancy?”
“Well do I. Faix an’ I got me clothes av him up till the toime he died. Divil a-far from crazy he wur whin his girl ran off wid Mike Murphy! An’ iv owld Larry wur mad at his b’y’s marryin’ a Jewess, the other wur worse at his dawther for takin’ up wid a Christian. By dad, he cursed her up hill an’ down dale; he frothed at the mouth, an’ groun’ his stumps av teeth together loike a madman; an’ nothin’ ud do him bud he’d hav her taken be the police. But Moran towld him he cud do nawthin’. He’d a tramped her under his feet wan day beyant on Second Street whin he met her, iv it hadn’t bin for Peter Nolan, Dick’s father, God rist his sowl in glory! Peter jumped out av his cart an’ dragged him away. Put Aaron an’ owld Larry in a bag together, an’ scure till the wan cud tell which ’ud jump out the first, for timper.”