"I think she's going to tell him," said Jane, soberly.
"Glory be!" he said, fervently.
Jane sighed. "She's going to tell him, in the garish daylight, at the Gent's Furnishing counter. If she can! But she's left me with the 'heart-scald'!"
Michael Daragh had picked up Billiken at once and at once she had ceased to roar and soothed to a whimpering cry. "Hush, now acushla," he said, "hush now,—let you be still, solis na suile!" The baby stopped altogether, her ear intrigued by the purling Gaelic. "If you'll be slipping out now, the way she won't be noticing, I'll have her fine and fast asleep in two flips of a dead lamb's tail!"
Jane slipped out obediently and stepped softly down the precipitate stair. The matron looked up, her lips thinly compressed.
"Mr. Daragh thinks you have persuaded her to tell."
"I can't be sure. I think she meant to tell him when she left here."
"Well, I guess she'll change her mind by the time she gets to the store. She's very weak, Ethel is."
"But there isn't anything weak about the way she cares for the Jerry person."
Mrs. Richards' lips tightened to a taut line. "When they get mad crazy about a man" (the plural pronoun pigeonholed Ethel in a class) "they're like the Rock of Gibraltar."