New-York tribune., 1920-08-22

Con Cooney's voice, and understood
that their neighbor had dropped in
again for supper. He liked Cooney
because Cooney liked him-and
the presence of another man in the
house seemed somehow to mitigate
the feminine conspiracy to belittle
him.
Mrs. Cook, having rented all her
upper floors, housed her family in
three rooms in the basement; and
they had their meals in the big, old
fashioned kitchen, on an ollcloth-
covered table, beside a cookstove that
stood in an arched niche of brick in
the chimney wall. Barney smelled
the potato cakes in the oven as he
hung up his hat in the lower hall.
He did not get the subtler fragrance
of clam chowder till he came into
the room. When old Cooney said
heartily: GLOW are yc, boy?" he an
swered, "Fine an dandy" with a
smile. 1t was the smile of an ex-
pectant stomach.
His mother rose to get his soup
plate from the warming shelf, but
she merely looked her greeting in a
glance of solicitude that saw him
/ tired and hungry. Any demonstra-
tion Of affection from her would have
seemed hypocritical. Cooney said
"That'll stick to'yer ribs" as she put
steaming plate of chowder before
Barney. He replied, "Sure, Nike
and grinned.
1t was chowder as thick as an
Irish stew-a savory suttee of indis-
tlnguishable vegetables that had
been inundated at the obsequies of
the clam, and now, in the ascending
steam, gave up their essential souls
to assist his translation into glory
Like an aromatic music, it soothed
Barney with vague strengthening
of spirit that was at once Unsuitable
and contented. He opened his moist
lips to the first spoonful, and it sank
to the seat of satisfaction that was
too deep to be lifted even by sigh.
He hunched himself over that Sc
ductive distillation, drinking a
steady stream Of spoonfuls, gazing
into it hypnotically, breathing it,
brooding on it, lost in it. The con-
versation went on above his devo-
tional, bowed head. The others had
arrived at the potato cakes. They
could talk.
They We're talking of Cooney's do
mestic affairs. He was widower,
with two married daughters, to each
of whom, on the day of her mar
riage, he had given a house. "Why
should | be keepin' thin waitin' fer
my fun'ral," he said, "to get their bit
O properly? They need it more
now" 1t was all he had-those two
houses. They represented the saw
lngs Of lifetime of trucking. He
had sold his teams and his trucks to
pay off the last installment of mort
gage when he retired.
He had a ruddy old face-the rud-
dier by contrast with the whiteness
Of his hair. 1t was a face Of kindly
philosophy growing senile. He had
always had the name of being "kind
o simple"; and there was this SIM
plicity in his confessing to Mrs.
Cook, at her supper table, that he
was worried out of his sleep because
his youngest daughter, with whom
he was living, had made up her mind
to give up renting rooms, to sell her
house and move into fiat. Its
been hard times, as We know,
ma'am," he explained, "gettin' rooms
rented hereabouts since thin sub
ways an tunnels an all was digged.
But what wud I be dom in a fat?"
Mrs. Cook attempted to cheer him
by helping him to another potato
cake. 1t distracted him at least. He
split it with his knife, spread the
halves with Jumps Of butter and
closed them together on that melting
secret, to absorb it tenderly.
Barney said, in the silence: "Why
don't you get about ten ton O. coal
an shoot it into her cellar?"
Cooney looked up from his cake.
What good 'ud that do, d. We
think"
"She'd never move out an leave it.
would she?"
''Niver!' He laid down his knife
and fork. "Boy! Ye're a wunnder!
How did y iver think o that, now"
Barney nodded, with his eyes on
his chowder, as if to say, ooh, /
know thing or two, even if some
people don't think So" As a matter
OF fact, he had once heard of p
man using load of coal to anchor
his wife when she talked of moving.
Annie piped up: II don't see that