Page:O'Higgins--The Adventures of Detective Barney.djvu/253

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BARNEY AND KING LEAR
237

a whole summer that she had no money for her dad. The winter brought some return of prosperity, but not for him. He had all he could eat and a comfortable room, but Buntz had evidently persuaded his wife that her father’s spending money ought to come from the other daughter; and they let him go shabby, with empty pockets and a cold pipe. He left them—after a quarrel with Buntz.

“He ’s a durty little furriner,” he explained to Mrs. Cook. “They ’re the currse o’ the country, as ye know, ma’m—thim furriners. They ’ve got no right to marry dacint Amuricans. There ought to be a law agin it.”

Kathleen’s man, the machinist, was the proper sort; and they had received him with a sympathy that encouraged his grievance and increased his ill-will against Buntz. But the machinist was chronically out of work, and Kathleen was no such manager as her sister; and though Cooney and the husband made themselves useful around the house, and shared their tobacco when they had any—and