"You get out, and leave my girl alone!" said William, with a shove. And his tired face brightened wonderfully, as he slipped his hand under Susan"s arm.
"Now, Sue," he said contentedly, "we"ll go straight to Ra.s.sette"s--but wait a minute--I"ve got to telephone!"
Susan stood alone on the corner, quite as a matter of course, while he dashed into a saloon. In a moment he was back, introducing her to a weak-looking, handsome young man, who, after a few wistful glances back toward the swinging door, walked away with them, and was presently left in the care of a busily cooking little wife and a fat baby. Billy was stopped and addressed on all sides. Susan found it pleasantly exciting to be in his company, and his pleasure in showing her this familiar environment was unmistakable.
"Everything"s rotten and upset now," said Billy, delighted with her friendly interest and sympathy. "You ought to see these people when they aren"t on strike! Now, let"s see, it"s five thirty. I"ll tell you, Sue, if you"ll miss the seven-five boat, I"ll just wait here until we get the news from the conference, then I"ll blow you to Zink"s best dinner, and take you home on the ten-seventeen."
"Oh, Bill, forget me!" she said, concerned for his obvious fatigue, for his face was grimed with perspiration and very pale. "I feel like a fool to have come in on you when you"re so busy and so distressed!
Anything will be all right---"
"Sue, I wouldn"t have had you miss this for a million, if you can only get along, somehow!" he said eagerly. "Some other time---"
"Oh, Billy, DON"T bother about me!" Susan dismissed herself with an impatient little jerk of her head. "Does this new thing worry you?" she asked.
"What new thing?" he asked sharply.
"Why, this--this plan of Mr. Carpenter"s to bring a train-load of men on from Philadelphia," said Susan, half-proud and half-frightened.
"Who said so?" he demanded abruptly.
"Why, I don"t know his name, Billy--yes I do, too! Mrs. Cudahy called him Jarge---"
"George Weston, that was!" Billy"s eyes gleamed. "What else did he say?"
"He said a man named Edward Harris---" "Sure it wasn"t Frank Harris?"
"Frank Harris--that was it! He said Harris overheard him--or heard him say so!"
"Harris didn"t hear anything that the old man didn"t mean to have him hear," said Billy grimly. "But that only makes it the more probably true! Lord, Lord, I wonder where I can get hold of Weston!"
"He"s going to be at that conference, at half-past five," Susan a.s.sured him. He gave her an amused look.
"Aren"t you the little Foxy-Quiller!" he said. "Gosh, I do love to have you out here, Sue!" he added, grinning like a happy small boy. "This is Ra.s.sette"s, where I"m staying," he said, stopping before the very prettiest and gayest of little gardens. "Come in and meet Mrs.
Ra.s.sette."
Susan went in to meet the blonde, pretty, neatly ap.r.o.ned little lady of the house.
"The boys already are upstairs, Mr. Oliver," said Mrs. Ra.s.sette, and as Billy went up the little stairway with flying leaps, she led Susan into her clean little parlor. Susan noticed a rug whose design was an immense brown dog, a lamp with a green, rose-wreathed shade, a carved wooden clock, a little mahogany table beautifully inlaid with white holly, an enormous pair of mounted antlers, and a large concertina, ornamented with a mosaic design in mother-of-pearl. The wooden floor here, and in the hall, was unpainted, but immaculately clean and the effect of the whole was clean and gay and attractive.
"You speak very wonderful English for a foreigner, Mrs. Ra.s.sette."
"I?" The little matron showed her white teeth. "But I was born in New Jersey," she explained, "only when I am seven my Mama sends me home to my Grandma, so that I shall know our country. It is a better country for the working people," she added, with a smile, and added apologetically, "I must look into my kitchen; I am afraid my boy shall fall out of his chair."
"Oh, let"s go out!" Susan followed her into a kitchen as spotless as the rest of the house, and far more attractive. The floor was cream-white, the woodwork and the tables white, and immaculate blue saucepans hung above an immaculate sink.
Three babies, the oldest five years old, were eating their supper in the evening sunshine, and now fixed their solemn blue eyes upon the guest. Susan thought they were the cleanest babies she had ever seen; through their flaxen mops she could see their clean little heads, their play-dresses were protected by checked gingham ap.r.o.ns worked in cross-st.i.tch designs. Marie and Mina and Ernie were kissed in turn, after their mother had wiped their rosy little faces with a damp cloth.
"I am baby-mad!" said Susan, sitting down with the baby in her lap. "A strike is pretty hard, when you have these to think of, isn"t it?" she asked sympathetically.
"Yes, we don"t wish that we should move," Mrs. Ra.s.sette agreed placidly, "We have been here now four years, and next year it is our hope that we go to our ranch."
"Oh, have you a ranch?" asked Susan.
"We are buying a little ranch, in the Santa Clara valley," the other woman said, drawing three bubbling Saucepans forward on her shining little range. "We have an orchard there, and there is a town nearby where Joe shall have a shop of his own. And there is a good school! But until my Marie is seven, we think we shall stay here. So I hope the strike will stop. My husband can always get work in Los Angeles, but it is so far to move, if we must come back next year!"
Susan watched her, serenely beginning to prepare the smallest girl for bed; the helpful Marie trotting to and fro with nightgowns and slippers. All the while the sound of men"s voices had been rising and falling steadily in an upstairs room. Presently they heard the sc.r.a.ping of chairs on a bare floor, and a door slammed.
Billy Oliver put his head into the kitchen. He looked tired, but smiled when he saw Susan with the sleepy baby in her lap.
"h.e.l.lo, Sue, that your oldest? Come on, woman, the Cudahys expect us to dinner, and we"ve not got much time!"
Susan kissed the baby, and walked with him to the end of the block, and straight through the open door of the Cudahy cottage, and into the kitchen. Here they found Mrs. Cudahy, dashing through preparations for a meal whose lavishness startled Susan. Bottles of milk and bottles of cream stood on the table, Susan fell to stripping ears of corn; there were pop-overs in the oven; Mrs. Cudahy was frying chickens at the stove. Enough to feed the Carroll family, under their mother"s exquisite management, for a week!
There was no management here. A small, freckled and grinning boy known as "Maggie"s Tim" came breathless from the grocery with a great bottle of fancy pickles; Billy brought up beer from the cellar; Clem Cudahy cut a thick slice of b.u.t.ter from a two-pound square, and helped it into the serving-dish with a pudgy thumb. A large fruit pie and soda crackers were put on the table with the main course, when they sat down, hungry and talkative.
"Well, what do you think of the Ironworks Row?" asked Billy, at about seven o"clock, when the other men had gone off to the conference, and Susan was helping Mrs. Cudahy in the kitchen.
"Oh, I like it!" Susan a.s.sured him, enthusiastically. "Only," she added in a lowered tone, with a glance toward Mrs. Cudahy, who was out in the yard talking to Lizzie, "only I prefer the Ra.s.sette establishment to any I"ve seen!"
"The Ra.s.settes," he told her, significantly, "are trained for their work; she just as much as he is! Do you wonder I think it"s worth while to educate people like that?"
"But Billy--everyone seems so comfortable. The Cudahys, now,--why, this dinner was fit for a king--if it had been served a little differently!"
"Oh, Clem"s a rich man, as these men go," Billy said. "He"s got two flats he rents, and he"s got stock! And they"ve three married sons, all prosperous."
"Well, then, why do they live here?"
"Why wouldn"t they? You think that it"s far from clubs and shops and theaters and libraries, but they don"t care for these things. They"ve never had time for them, they"ve never had time to garden, or go to clubs, and consequently they don"t miss them. But some day, Sue," said Billy, with a darkening face, "some day, when these people have the a.s.surance that their old age is to be protected and when they have easier hours, and can get home in daylight, then you"ll see a change in laborers" houses!"
"And just what has a strike like this to do with that, Billy?" said Susan, resting her cheek on her broom handle.
"Oh, it"s organization; it"s recognition of rights; it"s the beginning!" he said. "We have to stand before we can walk!"
"Here, don"t do that!" said Mrs. Cudahy, coming in to take away the broom. "Take her for a walk, Billy," said she, "and show her the neighborhood." She laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Now, don"t ye worry about the men coming back," said she kindly, "they"ll be back fast enough, and wid good news, too!"
"I"m going to stay overnight with Mrs. Cudahy," said Susan, as they walked away.
"You are!" he stopped short, in amazement.
"Yes, I am!" Susan returned his smile with another. "I could no more go home now than after the first act of a play!" she confessed.
"Isn"t it d.a.m.ned interesting?" he said, walking on.
"Why, yes," she said. "It"s real at last--it"s the realest thing I ever saw in my life! Everything"s right on the surface, and all kept within certain boundaries. In other places, people come and go in your lives.
Here, everybody"s your neighbor. I like it! It could be perfect; just fancy if the Carrolls had one house, and you another, and I a third, and Phil and his wife a fourth--wouldn"t it be like children playing house! And there"s another thing about it, Billy," Susan went on enthusiastically, "it"s honest! These people are really worried about shoes and rent and jobs--there"s no money here to keep them from feeling everything! Think what a farce a strike would be if every man in it had lots of money! People with money CAN"T get the taste of really living!"
"Ah, well, there"s a lot of sin and wretchedness here now!" he said sadly. "Women drinking--men acting like brutes! But some day, when the liquor traffic is regulated, and we have pension laws, and perhaps the single tax---"
"And the Right-Reverend William Lord Oliver, R. I., in the Presidential Chair, hooray and Glory be to G.o.d---!" Susan began.