“I never was marry.”
The young man looked up at the mill windows where childish heads were bobbing to and fro.
“That was poor judgment, Etienne. You might have married and have a dozen children now, working hard for you in the mill. Just like those children yonder.”
The old man came to the end of his foot-bridge and flung down his rake and his pike-pole.
The sudden emotions of his Gallic forebears swept through him. His features worked, his voice was high with passion.
“Ba gar, I don't sleep the night because I think about dem poor childs. Dem little white face, dem arm, dem leg—all dry up—not so big as chicken leg. And all outdoor free to odder childs—not to them childs up dere.” He shook his fists at the mill windows. And some child who saw the motion, getting a hasty peep from a widow, squealed, “Hi yi, old Pickaroon!”
“It doesn't pay to get too excited over the sorrows of the world, my friend,” drawled the young man under the tree. “It doesn't do any good; and then somebody calls you names. I was something like you once. But I've changed my philosophy. I have hypnotized my altruism. Now I'm perfectly happy.”
Etienne stared without understanding these big words. But he had often told himself that he never expected to understand Yankee speech very well. He worked alone; he lived alone in his garret in the tenement block; he talked but little with any person. But this young man with the wonderful smile seemed to inspire him to talk—even to the extent of revealing his secrets.
He lowered his voice. “Thirty year I have work here. I live way up in the little room. Bread I eat with lard on it. It costs little. Of the six dollaire I save much. Ah, oui! Hist! Not for me I save it. Ah, non! To the priest I give it. To the good priest. And the poor childs what are sick—he send 'em to the farm—to have some outdoors. But I don't sleep the night because I think the dollaire come so slow—and so many poor childs are sick.”
He picked up his rake and pike and went back to his labor.