"A dollar an hour! I never heard of such a thing. In Baltimore——"
"We are not in Baltimore, much as I should admire to visit that city. Skilled labor, you know——"
"But the skill was poor Jim Barlow's, and the lumber mine. At such a rate your farm services would be worth a fortune, and far more than I could pay. I hoped to get somebody to work 'on shares'; or at least, very cheaply."
"For the present, ma'am, there wouldn't be any 'shares.' The ground is absolutely profitless. But I am not exorbitant, nor would I grind the face of the poor. I am a poor man myself. I glory in it. I think that two dollars and a half a day would be fair to both sides."
With this the high, thin voice subsided and John Chester took up the theme, like his wife quoting their old city as a unit of measurement:
"In Baltimore, or its suburbs, a day or farm laborer would not earn more than a dollar and a half, or even so low as a dollar and a quarter."
"Per day, working on every consecutive day?" asked this would-be employee, leaning back in the rocker and folding his arms. It seemed he never could form a sentence without putting into it the largest words at his command, and listening to him, Martha almost hoped that their present discussion would prove fruitless. However could they endure his wordiness!
"Yes. Of course it would be every day," she answered.
But his next remark came with an originality worthy none other than himself:
"Very well. I have my price and my opinion—you have yours. Let us meet one another halfway. I will work only every other day—I can do as much as two ordinary men, anyway—and thus you will be called upon for no more than you would have had to pay some assistant from privileged Baltimore."