"It's me, ma."
"Heiny bring you home?"
"Sure," happily.
"There's a bit of sausage left, and some pie if----"
"Oh, I ain't hungry. We stopped at Joey's downtown and had a
cup of coffee and a ham on rye. Did you remember to put out the
milk bottle?"
For two weeks there had been none of that. Gussie had learned
to creep silently into bed, and her mother, being a mother, feigned
sleep.
To-night at her desk Miss Gussie Fink seemed a shade cooler,
more self-contained, and daisylike than ever. From somewhere at
the back of her head she could see that Heiny was avoiding her desk
and was using the services of the checker at the other end of the
room. And even as the poison of this was eating into her heart she
was tapping her forefinger imperatively on the desk before her and
saying to Tony, the Crook:
"Down on the table with that tray, Tony--flat. This may be a
busy little New Year's Eve, but you can't come any of your
sleight-of-hand stuff on me." For Tony had a little trick of
concealing a dollar-and-a-quarter sirloin by the simple method of
slapping the platter close to the underside of his tray and holding
it there with long, lean fingers outspread, the entire bit of
knavery being concealed in the folds of a flowing white napkin in
the hand that balanced the tray.
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