She tripped out, while Gus watched her, an odd expression on his face. Then turning to the woman who was holding out the precious roll, he said bluntly,
"It don't cost a thing to give a man a kind and hopeful word, but how many girls like that would do it? She's a lady!"
He walked away as if on air. He was no longer the awkward lout, stolidly working at uncongenial toil. He had a hope, a purpose, a plan, and his sometimes sullen face was transformed into manly alertness and strength.
From that time on he forgot his burns, and Nature took them in hand, healing the broken flesh in her most clean cut fashion. Scarcely a scar remained, and on the day he received the brief notice that his plans were accepted it seemed as if the scars fell from his soul also, leaving it cleaner, stronger, better. He had found his rightful work, and that is inspiration to any man.
CHAPTER IX.
DAN.
Factory hours were over, and Dan Price issued from the heated place, his old coat over his arm, and his neck bared to what little breeze there was, as he turned his moist face in the direction of home. There was no loitering among the boys, no waiting for any special girl.
Dan had no boon companions, no home ties, no courting to carry on. He "kept company" with no one but himself. The one room he called home was in one of the houses still untouched by the changes going on, a remnant of the once ugly row, now largely broken into, but not wholly destroyed.
For, with that perversity of inanimate things which attends every large enterprise to retard in every possible manner, through bad weather, the non-arrival of needed materials, loss, breakage, accident, and the "soldiering" of the workmen, many hindrances had arisen, and while wonders had been accomplished much remained to be done. But what had tried Joyce almost beyond endurance was to find that her greatest opposition came from the people she was trying to benefit. Often she found herself, through her builders, butting against a wall of human perversity and stupidity fairly insurmountable.