“How come you know so much about it, Purdy?”
“It’s up to me to know. This is my second year in Sheddon. I was here last year and flunked out—had to take the work over again. I guess I’m not much good, anyway.”
Larry had his own opinion about that. What he suspected was that Purdick had had to do so much outside work for the money-earning that he hadn’t had time, or the needed energy, for study—which was the fact.
While Larry was arriving at the fact, Purdick got up to go. But at the door he turned, and his face was white and the hand on the door-knob was shaking.
“Donovan, I hope you’ll do that fellow up, cold!” he snapped, with his pale eyes ablaze.
“Ump!” said Larry. Then: “Why the sudden burst of fury?”
“You know, perfectly well. He and his kind are always putting you and me and our kind to the wall—squeezing the life out of the working classes. They got my father between the millstones and ground him till he died! But our time’s coming; and when it does come—look out!”
“Here, you firebrand—come back here!” Larry called; but the door had slammed and the lame dog was gone.
For some little time after Purdick had left him, Larry sat at the table with his square chin propped in his cupped hands. Class distinctions, as between rich and poor, had never troubled him very much in his home life. There hadn’t been any hard-and-fast line drawn in the home High School, or, if there had been, it was fellows like himself—sons of workingmen—who drew it.
Naturally, while he was working spare time in the railroad shop and roundhouse, he had heard more or less talk about labor and capital, and about the battle that would one day be fought to a finish between the two; but most of this had gone in one ear and out the other. Dick Maxwell’s father, who, besides being general manager of the railroad, was a fairly wealthy mine owner, was the only “capitalist” he had ever known, and there was certainly no fault to be found with him.