You Never Know Your Luck | Page 6

He
undoubtedly was what her mother called "a queer dick," but also "a
pippin with a perfect core," which was her way of saying that he was a
man to be trusted with herself and with her daughter; one who would
stand loyally by a friend or a woman. He had stood by them both when
Augustus Burlingame, the lawyer, who had boarded with them when J.
G. Kerry first came, coarsely exceeded the bounds of liberal
friendliness which marked the household, and by furtive attempts at
intimacy began to make life impossible for both mother and daughter.
Burlingame took it into his head, when he received notice that his
rooms were needed for another boarder, that J. G. Kerry was the cause
of it. Perhaps this was not without reason, since Kerry had seen Kitty
Tynan angrily unclasping Burlingame's arm from around her waist, and
had used cutting and decisive words to the sensualist afterwards.
There had taken the place of Augustus Burlingame a land-agent--Jesse
Bulrush--who came and went like a catapult, now in domicile for three
days together, now gone for three weeks; a voluble, gaseous, humorous

fellow, who covered up a well of commercial evasiveness, honesty and
adroitness by a perspiring gaiety natural in its origin and convenient for
harmless deceit. He was fifty, and no gallant save in words; and, as a
wary bachelor of many years' standing, it was a long time before he
showed a tendency to blandish a good-looking middle-aged nurse
named Egan who also lodged with Mrs. Tynan; though even a
plain-faced nurse in uniform has an advantage over a handsome
unprofessional woman. Jesse Bulrush and J. G. Kerry were
friends--became indeed such confidential friends to all appearance,
though their social origin was evidently so different, that Kitty Tynan,
when she wished to have a pleasant conversation which gave her a
glow for hours afterwards, talked to the fat man of his lean and
aristocratic-looking friend.
"Got his head where it ought to be--on his shoulders; and it ain't for
playing football with," was the frequent remark of Mr. Bulrush
concerning Mr. Kerry. This always made Kitty Tynan want to sing, she
could not have told why, save that it seemed to her the equivalent of a
long history of the man whose past lay in mists that never lifted, and
whom even the inquisitive Burlingame had been unable to "discover"
when he lived in the same house. But then Kitty Tynan was as fond of
singing as a canary, and relieved her feelings constantly by this
virtuous and becoming means, with her good contralto voice. She was
indeed a creature of contradictions; for if ever any one should have had
a soprano voice it was she. She looked a soprano.
What she was thinking of as she sang with Kerry's coat in her hand it
would be hard to discover by the process of elimination, as the
detectives say when tracking down a criminal. It is, however, of no
consequence; but it was clear that the song she sang had moved her, for
there was the glint of a tear in her eye as she turned towards the house,
the words of the lyric singing themselves over in her brain:
"Hereaway my heart was soft; when he kissed my happy eyes, Held my
hand, and pressed his cheek warm against my brow, Home I saw upon
the hearth, heaven stood there in the skies' Whereaway, whereaway
goes my lover now?"'

She knew that no lover had left her; that none was in the habit of laying
his warm cheek against her brow; and perhaps that was why she had
said aloud to herself, "Kitty Tynan, Kitty Tynan, what a girl you are!"
Perhaps--and perhaps not.
As she stepped forward towards the door she heard a voice within the
house, and she quickened her footsteps. The blood in her face, the look
in her eye quickened also. And now a figure appeared in the
doorway--a figure in shirt-sleeves, which shook a fist at the hurrying
girl.
"Villain'!" he said gaily, for he was in one of his absurd, ebullient
moods--after a long talk with Jesse Bulrush. "Hither with my coat; my
spotless coat in a spotted world,--the unbelievable anomaly--
"'For the earth of a dusty to-day Is the dust of an earthy to-morrow.'"
When he talked like this she did not understand him, but she thought it
was clever beyond thinking--a heavenly jumble. "If it wasn't for me
you'd be carted for rubbish," she replied joyously as she helped him on
with his coat, though he had made a motion to take it from her.
"I heard you singing--what was it?" he asked cheerily, while it could be
seen that his mind was preoccupied. The song she had sung, floating
through the air, had