"Thank yuh," Mrs. Byrne replied with hoarse sarcasm. "I'm not likely to, at my age." She added, consolingly: "Cregan's young fer his years. Drivin' a Fift' Avenah bus is fine, preservin', outdoor work."
"It is that!" And Mrs. Cregan's tone remarked that the fact was the more to be deplored. "He'll be crankier an' crabbeder the older he grows." She dipped to her coffee and swallowed hard.
Mrs. Byrne had screwed up her eyes to squint at an idea that could not well be looked in the face. When she spoke it was to say slyly: "God forbid! But they do go off sometimes in a puff. He looks as if he'd live fer long enough, thank Heaven. But yuh never can tell."
Mrs. Cregan blinked, held her hand for a moment, and then began hastily to fill her mouth with food. The silence that ensued was long enough to take on an appearance of guilt.
It was long enough, too, for Mrs. Byrne to "contrive a procedure."
"Yuh never can tell," she began, "unless yuh have doin's with the devil—like them gipsies that see what's comin' by lookin' in the flat o' yer hand. There's one o' them aroun' the corner, an' they say she told Minnie Doyle the name o' the man she was to marry. An' he married her, at that!" Mrs. Cregan looked blank. Mrs. Byrne leaned forward to her. "I never whispered it to a livin' soul but yerself—but it was her told Mrs. Gunn that her last was to be a boy. A good month ahead! An' when she saw it was true she had no peace o' mind till she heard the priest say the words over the poor child an' saw that the sprinkle o' holy water didn't bubble off him like yuh'd sprinkled it on a hot stove." Mrs. Cregan's vacant regard had slowly gathered a gleam of startled intelligence. "An' if I was yerself, Mrs. Cregan—not knowin'
where I was to go to, ner how I was to live—I'd go an' have a talk with her before I went further, d'yuh see?"
"God forbid! 'Tis a mortal sin."
"'Tis not. When I told Father Dumphy what I'd done, he called me an ol' fool an' gave me an extry litany fer penance. What's a litany!"