“All we need do,” her son broke in, “is just tell him.”
“Yes, just tell him about it--it’s very unfortunate--and ask him to come and see you. I hope, though,” he paused, “I hope they won’t want to go and get married.”
“He ought to be made to, devil blast him,” cried Mrs. Flynn, “only she’s frightened, she is; afraid of her mortal life of him! We don’t want him here, neither, she says he’s a nasty horrible man.”
Johnny sat dumb for some moments. Pomona was a day girl in service at a restaurant. Stringer was a clerk to an auctioneer. The figure of his pale little sister shrinking before a ruffian (whom he figured as a fat man with a red beard) startled and stung him.
“Besides,” continued Mrs. Flynn, “he’s just going to be married to some woman, some pretty judy, God help her ... in fact, as like as not he’s married to her already by now. No, I gave up that idea long ago, I did, before I told you, long ago.”
“We can only tell him about Pomony then, and ask him what he would like to do.”
“What he would _like_ to do, well, certainly!” protested the widow.
“And if he’s a decent chap,” continued Johnny serenely, “it will be all right, there won’t be any difficulty. If he ain’t, then we can do something else.”
His mother was reluctant to concur but the boy had his way. He sat with his elbows on the table, his head pressed in his hands, but he could not think out the things he wanted to say to this man. He would look up and stare around the room as if he were in a strange place, though it was not strange to him at all for he had lived in it many years. There was not much furniture in the apartment, yet there was but little space in it. The big table was covered with American cloth, mottled and shiny. Two or three chairs full of age and discomfort stood upon a carpet that was full of holes and stains. There were some shelves in a recess, an engraving framed in maple of the player scene from “Hamlet,” and near by on the wall hung a gridiron whose prongs were woven round with coloured wools and decorated with satin bows. Mrs. Flynn had a passion for vases, and two of these florid objects bought at a fair companioned a clock whose once snowy face had long since turned sallow because of the oil Mrs. Flynn had administered “to make it go properly.”