"Look y'ere, Mrs. Muscovitz," she said authoritatively. "You go home. You ain't got no business out on a day like this. You'll catch your death. There ain't nothing doing to-day. I can hold it down alone."
"It's all right for you to talk, Yetta," Mrs. Muscovitz replied. "You can make speeches and you can work in the office and do lots of things for the Union. There ain't nothing I can do but picket. I couldn't pay rent without the 'strike benefits.' I've got to do something."
Pick-Axe came out of the saloon and seeing them together, knowing that it was less sport trying to torment two women than one, pulled his chair well inside of the doorway and cursed the vile weather.
"I tell you what you can do," Yetta went on arguing with Mrs. Muscovitz. "It'll do more good than standing here. You go over to headquarters and make some coffee. You tell Miss Train I said it was so cold she must send coffee out to the girls. You can borrow some pails and cups and Mrs. Weinstein's boy'll carry it round. Hot coffee'll do the girls good, and it'll make the cops sore to see us getting it. Making coffee'll do more good than standing here. Nobody's out; I can hold down this job all right."
"I hate to leave you alone with that snake."
"Oh," Yetta laughed, more light-heartedly than she felt. "Words don't break no bones. You run along."
While Mrs. Muscovitz was hesitating, she caught sight of a scab. "Look," she whispered. A big-boned young woman of about twenty, poorly clad and apparently much frightened, was standing on the opposite curbstone. She looked up at the sign in the window of the Crown Vest Company advertising the need of workers. And she looked down at the two women before the door. After a few indecisive minutes she started across the street.
"You run along to headquarters and get that coffee started," Yetta said. "I'll talk to her."
"No," said Mrs. Muscovitz. "Let me do it. And then I'll go. I want to do something."
She started towards the woman. Pick-Axe, bundled up in his overcoat, back in the entryway, did not see the scab approaching. She had probably read in the papers lying stories of how the strike breakers were being attacked. She was very much afraid, and when she saw Mrs. Muscovitz coming towards her, she screamed. Pick-Axe, not having seen what was happening,—if one wishes to find excuses for him,—may have really believed that the little Mrs. Muscovitz had assaulted the husky young scab. At the sound of the scream he jumped out of his chair and rushed at Mrs. Muscovitz. She, thinking that he was going to strike her, held out her hand to guard her face. Pick-Axe grabbed it, and with a vicious wrench, twisted her down on her knees.