“Indeed! Did you say what street it was? I heard my neighbor give some directions to the driver for us, but paid little attention.”
“Dingy street, number 97.”
“Dingy street! You don’t say! Why, I know that locality well. Very well, indeed. A great many of—of the Company’s employees live around there.”
“Most all of them do, I guess.”
“So your father’s out of work, just now?”
“Yes. But he’ll soon be ‘on’ again, I think. When he does work he gets real good wages. That is, if he isn’t ‘docked.’ I reckon the Company is pretty strict. My mother says they don’t allow for anything. A man must do his task or leave it, and that’s the end.”
“But that is quite right and just, is it not?”
“I—suppose—it is. Though poor men can’t always—I mean, they get discouraged sometimes. That makes them do and say things they wouldn’t else. It’s queer and unjust, my father says, for the Company to have so much money and their men so little. That’s what made him glad—I mean not so sorry—when—when—things happen.”
Mary Jane paused, confused. Twice she had nearly told this other father that her own father had been glad when Bonny-Gay had been hurt. She knew William Bump would not have said anything so cruel if he had not been drinking; she was sure of that, for he was generally so kind of heart. But even yet she did not imagine that her companion was himself the president and head of that Company whose wages her father gladly accepted even when he talked against it most fiercely.
However, Mr. McClure greatly enjoyed listening to this frank story of the underworkings of his vast enterprises. He was not only a very wealthy and powerful man, he was also a wise and just one. He felt the responsibilities of his position, and made it his business to know all employees by name and character, so far as that was possible. Over this particular portion of his affairs, right in his own city, he had an almost daily supervision, and he knew William Bump, in some respects, much better than this loyal little daughter did. His opinion of the father was very poor, and he had himself given orders, on the previous day, that the said William was never again to be taken on by his managers, “not in any capacity whatsoever.”