Jim Tenny, with a quick motion, unwound his arm from Eva's waist and stripped up his sleeve. “There, look at that, will you,” he cried out, shaking his lean, muscular arm at them; “look at that muscle, and me tellin' her that I could earn a livin' for her, and she afraid. I can dig if I can't make shoes. I guess there's work in this world for them that's willin', and don't pick and choose.”
“There ain't,” declared Nahum, shortly.
“You can't dig when the ground's froze hard,” Eva said, with literal meaning.
“Then I'll take a pickaxe,” cried Jim.
“You can dig, but who's goin' to pay you for the diggin'?” demanded Nahum Beals.
“The idea of a girl's bein' afraid I wa'n't enough of a man to support a wife with an arm like that,” said Jim Tenny, “as if I couldn't dig for her, or fight for her.”
“The fightin' has got to come first in order to get the diggin', and the pay for it,” said Nahum.
“Now, look at here,” Andrew Brewster broke in, “you know I'm in as bad a box as you, and I come home to-night feelin' as if I didn't care whether I lived or died; but if it's true what McGrath said to-night, we've got to use common-sense in lookin' at things even if it goes against us. If what McGrath said was true, that Lloyd's losing money keeping on, I dunno how we can expect him or any other man to do that.”
“Why not he lose money as well as we?” demanded Nahum, fiercely.
“'Cause we 'ain't got none to lose,” cried Jim Tenny, with a hard laugh, and Eva and Fanny echoed him hysterically.