Motion Picture Classic (Jan-Dec 1920)

Dinty Pearl By Maivernh A' ocsn t ( IIAI lake i):i\ fi r doiii' riglu." Dinty stood his grounri squarely, legs ()lantc(l sturdily apart, blue eyes level, lie repeated his assertion. It was said withoiU l)ravado. sini])le as part of the' boy's oreed. The third District .\tlorney eyed the small and evidently Irish face. ■'You're from the auld eounthrce" he said, with a smile and a brogue. O i n t y ' s 1 1 1 u e eyes gliiited. "Yessir," he said, "we've a story, we have. ,\ rare one." ■"rdl it nie." Ihc third District .\ttorney seldom squandered his valuable time so freely. More or less of a humanitarian, he h.ul learned to reject nnich of the flotsam drifting in to him in these quarters. Kspecially, the ones with "stories." (jene rally, the fiction was connivance in one form or another, more or less ingeniously masked. Dinty seemed difl'erent. There was a liglit in his blue eyes, wide eyes suggestive of strain and slee()lessness, there were faint hollows in his too-\oung cheeks and an irresistible and unquenchable humor in bis smile, a ready smile. "My mother was Doreen .\dair," the lad said, as tho he loved the dark romance of his telling: "she was in love, very greatly in lo\e she was, with Danny O'Sullivan. He had eyes like me. that Danny. There are many times when my mother, not so well as at other times, sir. kisses my two eyes and says 'fer you. Danny-arragh'. She forgets-like. They married secretly, the pair of 'em. Doreen .Vclair had a landed father and oh, such a lady-mother; luiglish, she was. I've heard of her often. I, aces, she wore, and little tip-tilty caps and a haughty air. Danny ( )'Sullivan wasn't good enough for the likes of an .\dair. .And so they got married, and then Danny got wind of a job in .America and he told Doreen how that he'd go over where gold was growing like sumac at home and then he'd send for her, and after a bit they'd go home again. Cnesus-like an<l rich and the proud mother of Doreen would how her haughty head." Dinty vouchsafed a smile. "It didn't happen like tliat." he said. " 'cause / came first, and then, when Doreen got here. Daiuiy had been kilt onlv three days before." \ little tenderness actual in its significance touched the lad's sensitive mouth, "it was a battle the little woman had to fight then." he said, "with me a babe as helpless as helpless and nary a cent, nor kin, nor friends, lint it takes the Irish ! Her proud mother and her stormy father and me, soft and dei)endent, but most of all. most of oil. her' (Fifly-lhrce) love for Danny ( )'.Sulli\ an pulled her thru, .'she worked by d.i\ and she worked by night and her body got thin and stooped .i.i.l her ])retty liair thinned and there's siller in it, and her feet lo-i their sha])es, slie saifl, and her liands got twisted and poor-like and after a while a doctor told her . . . her lungs had to be 'humored.' but, at first, she couldn't humor them, owing to the work and the hard times and all. Hut now . . . now . . ." the embryo man ijuft'ed his own exceeding small chest. "I'm the man of tlie family, now," he said. "I work by day and by night J take care of Doreen. I feed her and make her all comfy, same as she did for me, and I think she's mostly hap])y. .\'ow and then she takes me for Danny O'.'sullivan, and not just Dinty. and then she smiles and looks like the little picture of her taken on her father's estate, all curls and frills and laughing, .^n it's mostly all right." "But some of it isn't? .Some of it is figlit, eb ?" The young third District .Attorney felt a suspicious stinging of his eyeballs. Nor was he, in any sense, a sentimentalist, "Well, it's like this. I'm selling pajiers. Me and Watermillions, he's black outward and white inward, and Chinkie. he's yeller, but the same applies to the inner. We're up against a gang, l.evinsky's the head of it. Levinsky's a bird. He makes life hard for mc and for Watermillions and Chinkie. He has all the best corners, you sec, for his gang. Whenever one of us gets going good and gets a trade, he takes our corner^