"Hello, daddy!" With her arms round his neck, she was pulling his face down to hers.
"Where's your mother?" he asked of Gussie, having advanced into the room.
Gussie looked up from her task to inform him that her mother was in the kitchen, but, seeing his gray face and shambling gait, she paused with a fork in her hand.
"You're all right, daddy, aren't you?"
The sound of voices having called Lizzie from her work, she stood on the threshold of the pantry, drying her hands on the corner of her apron. Before he said a word she knew that the calamity which forever threatens those dependent on a weekly wage had fallen on the family.
"Lizzie, I'm fired."
She had never had to take a blow like this, not even when the three who came before Jennie had died in babyhood. This was the worst and hardest thing her imagination could conjure up, because it meant not only the sweeping away of their meager income, but her husband's defeat as a man.
Going to him, she laid her hands on his shoulders and tried to look into the eyes that avoided hers in shame.
"We'll meet it, Jo," she said, quietly. "We've been through other things. I've saved a little money ahead—nearly a hundred dollars. Don't feel badly. I'm glad you're out of Collingham & Law's, where you've said yourself that your desk was in a draught. You'll get another job, with bigger pay, and perhaps"—she sprang to the great glorious hope she was always cherishing—"and perhaps Teddy will earn more money and be a great success."
"Hel-lo, ma!"