"I understand the boys are talking about electing me."
"Well, if you come around trying to graft off me, or calling strikes on my jobs, there'll be trouble—I tell you that."
"I'll make you an exception. I'll not graft off you, and I'll let you work scabs and work 'em twenty-four hours a day, if you want to."
"I know how!" Mr. Driscoll mopped his face again. "I came around here, Keating, to say about three things to you. I wanted to congratulate you, and that I've done. And I wanted to tell you the latest in the Avon affair. I heard just before I left the office that those thugs of Foley's, hearing that he'd skipped and left 'em in the lurch, had confessed that you didn't have a thing to do with the Avon explosion—that Foley'd put them up to it, and so on. It'll be in the papers this afternoon. Even if your case comes to trial, you'll be discharged in a minute. The other thing——"
"Mr. Driscoll——" Tom began gratefully.
Mr. Driscoll saw what was coming, and rushed on at full speed. "The other thing is this: I'm speaking serious now, and just as your father might, and it's for your own good, and nothing else. What I've got to say is, get out of the union. You're too good for it. A man's got to do the best he can for himself in this world; it's his duty to make a place for himself. And what are you doing for yourself in the union? Nothing. They've turned you down, and turned you down hard, in the last few months. It's all hip-hip-hurrah for you to-day, but they'll turn you down again just as soon as they get a chance. Mark what I say! Now here's the thing for you to do. You can get out of the union now with glory. Get out, and take the job I offered you five months ago. Or a better one, if you want it."
"I can't tell you how much I thank you, Mr. Driscoll," said Tom. "But that's all been settled before. I can't."
"Now you see here!"—and Mr. Driscoll leaned forward and with the help of a gesticulating fist launched into an emphatic presentation of "an old man's advice" on the subject of looking out for number one.
While he had been talking Ruth had walked about the block in dazing pain, and now she had been brought back to the tenement door by the combined strength of love and duty. During the last two weeks she had often wished that she might speak a moment with Tom, to efface the impression she had given him on that tragic evening when they had been last together, that knowing him could mean to her only great pain. That she should tell him otherwise, that she should yield him the forgiveness she had withheld, had assumed to her the seriousness of a great debt she must discharge. The present was her best chance—perhaps she could see him for a moment alone. And so, duty justifying love, she entered the tenement and mounted the stairs.
Tom's "Come in!" answered her knock. Clutching her self-control in both her hands, she entered. At sight of her Tom rose upon his elbow, then sank back, as pale as she, his fingers turned into his palms.