CHAPTER VII
But on coming home one evening two or three weeks later, I found Eleanore reading aloud to our son with a most preoccupied look on her face.
"Joe Kramer is coming to dinner," she said. "He called up this morning and said he'd like to see us again. Sue is coming, too, as it happens. She dropped in this afternoon."
Sue arrived a few minutes later, and at once I thought to myself I had never seen her look so well. For once she had taken time to dress. She had done her dark hair in a different way. Her color, which had been poor of late, to-night was most becomingly high, and those fascinating eyes of hers were bright with a new animation.
"She has found a fine new hobby," I thought.
Her whole attitude to us was one of eager friendliness. She made much of what we had done for Joe.
"You've no idea," she told me, "how he feels about you both." She was speaking of this when Joe came in.
He, too, appeared to me different. Into his blunt manner had crept a certain awkwardness, his gruff voice had an anxious note at times and his eyes a hungry gleam. Poor old Joe, I thought. It must be hard, despite all his talk, to see what he had missed in life, to feel what a sacrifice he had made. He had thrown everything aside, love, marriage, home, all personal ties—to tackle this bleak business of slums. The more pity he had such a twisted view. And as presently, in reply to Sue's questions, he talked about the approaching strike, my irritation at his talk grew even sharper than before.
"Your stokers and dock laborers," I interrupted hotly, "are about as fit to build up a mew world as they are to build a Brooklyn Bridge! When I compare them to Eleanore's father and his way of going to work"—I broke off in exasperation. "Can't you see you're all just floundering in a perfect swamp of ignorance?"