Katie Flanagan was waiting for him as he came hurrying up the steps from the subway at Park Place—the piquant, pretty girl of the photograph, in black, because her parents had died not long since, but in black just as elaborate as her slender purse would permit, because she knew the full value of her raven hair and blossoming cheeks and tender eyes of Irish blue.
"Ach," gasped Hermann, "hof I kep' you a long time vaitin'?"
"Only about as long as you mostly do," she answered. Her voice was like her eyes, and she spoke with but the charming hint of a Galway brogue.
The German's cheeks burned with humiliation.
"I'm sorry," he apologized. "I god up early to be on dime, bud de train vas lade from the cem't'ry in."
She understood and smiled.
"It's only five minutes I've been here," she confessed.
"Und I brought you a few bosies, Katie. I d'ought maybe——"
"Oh!" she seized the carnations with a laugh of delight, and buried her nose in them. "It's good y'are to think of such things, Hermann—and a bad lad that y'are to spend the money so!"
They were making their way toward the Bridge, the sturdy Hoffmann shouldering a passage through the momentarily swelling Sunday morning crowd.