The Gamble (I) Read Online Free PDF Page B

as he stood beside her, resting the plates against the long white apron lashed around his middle.
    “Delicious, as usual. Give Emma my compliments.”
    “Sure will, ma’am, sure will.”
    She extended her coins. He ignored them and picked up her cobbler bowl. “No need for that. Your meal’s already paid for.”
    Agatha’s eyes widened. Her head snapped up, her hat teetered. “Paid for? But—”
    “By Mr. Gandy.” Cyrus nodded to a table behind her.
    She spun in her chair to find the bane of her morning seated at a nearby table watching every move she made.Apparently, he’d been doing so for some time; there was a soiled napkin on his table and he was enjoying an after-dinner cigar. His dark eyes were riveted upon her. While they stared at each other, the only thing that moved was the smoke coiling about his black hair. Until he politely nodded his head.
    The color leaped to her face. Her mouth tightened. “I can very well pay for my own, Mr. Paulie,” she declared, loudly enough that Gandy could hear. “And even if I couldn’t, I would not accept a meal from a lowlife like him. Tell Mr. Gandy I would cheerfully starve first.”
    She threw two coins on the table. One hit a sugar bowl and ricocheted to the floor, where it rolled for a full five seconds, then circled to a halt. In the silence it sounded like thunder.
    Agatha rose from her chair with all the dignity she could muster, feeling the curious eyes of other diners watching as she shuffled past Gandy to the door. He watched her all the way, but she lifted her chin high and glared at the brass doorknob.
    Outside, her eyes stung with humiliation. Some people got their satisfactions in cruel ways. She supposed he was chuckling.
    At home she struggled up the stairs, wishing once—just once!—she could stomp up the steps with all the outrage she felt. Instead, she was forced to stump up like an old woman. Well, she wasn’t an old woman. She wasn’t! And to prove it, when she got to the top she slammed the door so hard a picture fell off her parlor wall.
    She tore her hat off and paced the length of her apartment, rubbing her left hip. How humiliating! With a whole roomful of people looking on he chose to do a thing like that. But why? To taunt her? She’d put up with taunting since she was nine years old and had gone bouncing down a flight of stairs. Forever after, children had giggled, teased, and found disparaging names for “the gimp.” And even adults couldn’t resist a second glance. But this—this was debasing.
    In time her anger subsided, leaving her empty and forlorn. She put her hat in a bandbox, stowed it on the chifforobeshelf, wandered to the front window, and looked down on the street. Dusk had fallen. Across the way the lights from the Hoof and Horn splashed onto the boardwalk from behind the swinging doors. Below, they most likely did the same, though she could see no more than the railed roof of the boardwalk, just outside her floor-length window. The piano had started up. Its faraway tinkling, coupled with the sound of laughter, made her sad. She turned, studying the apartment: the perimeter of her world. One long, stuffy shotgun room filled with her old maid’s furnishings. Her prized Hepplewhite bed and matching chest with its inlay of white holly, the maroon horsehair settee with ivory crocheted antimacassars, the gateleg table, the lowboy, corner curio cabinet, the six-plate stove, the banjo clock, the sampler she’d knocked off the wall.
    With a sigh she went to pick it up. Hanging it on the nail, she read the familiar lines:
    Needle, thread, embroidery hoop;
    Satin stitch, French knot, and loop;
    Patience, care, and fortitude;
    Practice makes my stitching good.
    As she gazed at the sampler, a sad expression covered her face. How old had she been when her mother taught her to stitch? Seven? Eight? Before the accident, most certainly, because one of her earliest recollections was of standing beside her mother’s chair in the