Conniston turned
away abruptly.
With Billy Jordan he went nearly to the end of the short street before
they came to a rude lunch-counter, set under a canvas awning, where a
thin, nervous little man and his fat, stolid wife set canned goods and
coffee before them. Billy produced a yellow ticket to be punched,
Conniston paid his two bits, and they strolled back to the office.
When Conniston suggested that they take something to Garton, Billy
told him that a boy took him his meals.
There was so much to be got over that day, Conniston was so eager to
learn what details he could, Tommy Garton so eager to impart them,
that it was scarcely half-past twelve when the two men were back at
the long table going over maps and blue-prints. There were no
interruptions. An imprisoned house-fly buzzed monotonously and
sullenly against a pane of glass, his drone fitting into the heavy
silence on the face of the hot desert so that it became a part of it.
At four o'clock a handful of ragged children, barefooted, bronzed of
legs and hands and faces, scampered by on their noisy way home from
school. A pretty young woman in neat walking-habit and big white straw
hat followed the children, smiling in through the open door at Garton,
noting Conniston with a flash of big brown eyes and quickly dropping
lids. Billy, in seeming carelessness, had wandered to the door when
the children passed, and stepped outside, chatting with her for five
or ten minutes.
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