When it was all told, the girl still sat listening. She heard Radbourn's calm, slow voice again. It helped her not to hate Burns; it helped her to pity and understand him:
"You must remember that such toil brutalizes a man; it makes him callous, selfish, unfeeling, necessarily. A fine nature must either adapt itself to its hard surroundings or die. Men who toil terribly in filthy garments day after day and year after year cannot easily keep gentle; the frost and grime, the heat and cold will soon or late enter into their souls. The case is not all in favor of the suffering wives, and against the brutal husbands. If the farmer's wife is dulled and crazed by her routine, the farmer himself is degraded and brutalized."
As well as she could Lily explained all this to the woman, who lay with her face buried in the girl's lap. Lily's arms were about her thin shoulders in an agony of pity.
"It's hard, Lucretia, I know—more than you can bear—but you mustn't forget what Sim endures too. He goes out in the storms and in the heat and dust. His boots are hard, and see how his hands are all bruised and broken by his work! He was tired and hungry when he said that—he didn't really mean it."
"Mr. Radbourn says work, as things go now, does degrade a man in spite of himself. He says men get coarse and violent in spite of themselves, just as women do when everything goes wrong in the house—when the flies are thick, and the fire won't burn, and the irons stick to the clothes. You see, you both suffer. Don't lay up this fit of temper against Sim—will you?"
The wife lifted her head and looked away. Her face was full of hopeless weariness.
"It ain't this once. It ain't that 't all. It's having no let-up. Just goin' the same thing right over 'n' over—no hope of anything better."
"If you had a hope of another world"——
"Don't talk that. I don't want that kind o' comfert. I want a decent chance here. I want 'o rest an' be happy now." Lily's big eyes were streaming with tears. What should she say to the desperate woman? "What's the use? We might jest as well die—all of us."