The
neighbourhood was fine enough to look down upon these two
tumble-down shops at the corner, kept by Tony and Mrs. Murphy,
the grocer. It was a semi-fashionable locality, far up-town,
away from the old-time French quarter. It was the sort of
neighbourhood where millionaires live before their fortunes are
made and fashionable, high-priced private schools flourish, where
the small cottages are occupied by aspiring school-teachers and
choir-singers. Such was this locality, and you must admit that
it was indeed a condescension to tolerate Tony and Mrs. Murphy.
He was a great, black-bearded, hoarse-voiced, six-foot specimen
of Italian humanity, who looked in his little shop and on the
prosaic pavement of Prytania Street somewhat as Hercules might
seem in a modern drawing-room. You instinctively thought of wild
mountain-passes, and the gleaming dirks of bandit contadini in
looking at him. What his last name was, no one knew. Someone
had maintained once that he had been christened Antonio
Malatesta, but that was unauthentic, and as little to be believed
as that other wild theory that her name was Mary.
She was meek, pale, little, ugly, and German. Altogether part of
his arms and legs would have very decently made another larger
than she. Her hair was pale and drawn in sleek, thin tightness
away from a pinched, pitiful face, whose dull cold eyes hurt you,
because you knew they were trying to mirror sorrow, and could not
because of their expressionless quality.
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