“She does.”
“What does she say?”
“Everything—and then some,” was the grim response. “Don’t laugh!” he ordered. “Here’s one of the last of them.” Grogan took a dark blue envelope from his pocket, extracted a single sheet of the same color and read.
“Michael Grogan:—Do you remember what your old Irish mother said to you when you left Old Erin to seek your fortune in the new world? She said: ‘Mike, me boy, don’t soil your hands with dirty money.’ Mary Randall.”
“Don’t soil your hands with dirty money,” repeated Miss Masters.
“That’s a nice billy dux to find beside your plate at breakfast, ain’t it now?” demanded Grogan. Then after a pause he murmured half to himself,
“Me old Irish mother, God bless her, with her white hair and her sweet Connemara face! I can see her now, just as she stood there that day in the door of our cabin when I went off up the road, a slip of a boy, with a big bag of oatmeal over me shoulder—one shirt and me Irish fighting spirit. That was me capital in life, that and her blessing. She’s sleeping there now, and the shamrock is growing over her—”
Grogan stopped. His voice had grown husky.
“Say,” he demanded turning on Miss Masters abruptly, “why don’t you make me stop? Don’t you see I’m breaking me heart?”
The girl had really been moved. “I can’t,” she said, “because—” She got out her powder puff and proceeded hastily to decorate her nose. She was still engaged in this operation when the telephone rang. Grogan started.