The Press., 1893-09-28
fattering himself forgets to look at the mother. So it was with little Di Carlo.

mOLner. 90 It was W1Gn llULlo LII CaTlO. Men and roosters are so thoughtless!
 It was true, Carlotta was beauty, and every one said she was the image of her father, and so she was-his image in- spired. and the mother was the ingpifRs tion. #
 If the little husband reminded one of a rooster, a rooster who never crowed, it was not so much because the wife per sisted in doing the family growing as we'll as cackling as that it pleased him to sit by and smoke while she toyed with his prerogative One always felt that the crow was in him and that he had full confidence in the size of it. Such is the value of reserve.
 In deference to Pat the language of the evening circle was usually English. But though he had never attempted the Italian speech or professed comprehen- sion of it IA years of such familiarity with it as the shop afforded had opened the doors of his understanding. and noth- ing less than a subtletyof meaning as far beyond the Di Carlos as himself would have eluded him now.
 A sort of delicacy forbade his reveal ing this to those who sometimes chose to speak in his presence without inviting his participation.
 Among the occasional frequenters of the shop had been for some time an old man, Pietro Socola by name. for whom Pat had always felt an instinctive dis like.
 During the past few months Socola had become a frequent guest, and while he sat on box at the fathers side in the evenings and spoke in low tone in Ital- ian he was observed to cast frequent covert glances toward the daughter. Car lotta.
 Now, Socola was rich, according to the Di Carlo standard, and a,widower, and so Pat was not supersuspicious in inter preting these glances as ominous of meaning to Carlotta.
 The suspicion quickened his hearing, but the most assiduous eavesdropping had as yet disclosed nothing to confirm his fears. Gossip about the men on the luggers or at the Picayune tier, discus sions as to the rise or fall in prices of fruit or oysters, interspersed with long, tobacco favored silences, seemed to con- stitute all their social intercourse, and yet why did the ugly old fellow keep looking at Carlotta?
 Socola was of the one essentially home ly Italian type. His blue gray eyes and reddish hair were bereft of any leaning toward beauty by a heavy, swarthy skin, while the entire absence of upper front teeth gave q touch of grotesqueness to his ugly yisage. Short necked and square of build he had nevertheless astoop, produc- ing an effect as if his face arose from his chest. The edges of his grizzly red mus tache were further colored from the to- bacco which he perpetually chewed, and his hairy little hands bore about their blunt finger tips similar suggestions of the weed.
 Socola was plain as well as distinctly deficient in the subtle charm which we call personal magnetism.
 His wife had been dead but three months when he first came on Sunday afternoon to the Di Carlos. For three successive Sundays he returned thus, and then he began dropping in in the late evenings until now almost any night he could be seen propped up on his box at Di Carlos side. and whether Carlotta sat on the doorstep working on her sam pler'' or promenaded the banquette with one of tho twins astride her hip old Pie tro's eyes followed her.
 This. which Pat had been observing for some weeks. culminated one day in a tangible occasion for alarm.
 He was sitting inside the shop putting 2 finishing stitch to patch when he saw socola pass the door to join the cir cle about the steps without.
 A moment later Carlctta hastily en- tered the shop. her face black as . storm cloud.
 Come heer. Lottie, ho called quick ly, and as she approached him. ,.Whut ails yer"