"Matter?" returned the Interpreter. "Is there anything wrong here,
Helen?"
"You are not well," she insisted. "You look all worn out—as if you had not slept for weeks—what is it?"
"Oh, that is nothing," he answered, with a smile. "Billy and I have been working overtime a little—that is all."
"But why?" she demanded, "why must you wear yourself out like this?
Surely there is no need for you to work so hard, day and night."
He answered as if he were not sure that he had heard her aright. "No need, Helen? Surely, child, you cannot be so ignorant of the want that exists within sight of your home?"
She returned his look wonderingly. "You mean the strike?"
Bending over his work again, the old basket maker answered, sorrowfully, "Yes, Helen, I mean the strike."
There was something in the Interpreter's manner—something in the weary, drooping figure in that wheel chair—in the tired, deep-lined face—in the pain-filled eyes and the gentle voice that went to the deeps of Helen Ward's woman heart.
With her, as with every one in Millsburgh, the strike was a topic of daily conversation. She sympathized with her brother in his anxiety. She was worried over the noticeable effect of the excitement upon her father. She was interested in McIver's talk of the situation. But in no vital way had her life been touched by the industrial trouble. In no way had she come in actual contact with it. The realities of the situation were to her vague, intangible, remote from her world, as indeed the Mill itself had been, before her visit with John that day. To her, the Interpreter was of all men set apart from the world. In his little hut on the cliff, with his books and his basket making, her gentle old friend's life, it seemed to her, held not one thing in common with the busy world that lay within sight of the balcony-porch. The thought that the industrial trouble could in any way touch him came to her with a distinct shock.
"Surely," she protested, at last, "the strike cannot affect you. It has nothing to do with your work."