"Uncle Joe," little Alice chirped, "please tell Mum I are ready."
He ran up the stairs, gathered her in his arms, and bore her back to bed in the room where Susie and Jenny already slept.
"Hush!" she whispered, laying a tiny finger on his lips—"The little ones!"
He tucked her up and kissed her.
"You're the proper little mother, aren't you?" he whispered.
In the kitchen he found Ruth, a row of tin-tacks studding her lips, soling Alice's boots. The glint of steel between her lips, and the inward curl of her lips, gave her a touch of unusual grimness.
"Always at it," he said.
"Yes," she answered between muffled lips. "Got to be. Snob this time. Only the soles are rotten. It's like puttin nails into wet brown paper."
She was suffering terribly—he felt it; and suppressed accordingly. But if her furnaces were damped down, he could hear the flames roaring behind closed doors; and her passion, which typified for him the sufferings of those innocent millions to the redemption of whom he had consecrated his life, moved him profoundly.
He flung the bag on the table before her almost savagely. It jingled as it fell and squatted there, dowdy, and lackadaisical as a dumpling in a swoon.