"Led it out only to leave it," Kathleen answered vehemently. "The girls are in the street now working to keep their clothes from being snatched off their backs by a lot of dirty scabs."
Seeing that an explanation was demanded of her, Hertha turned to the Major and said with a blush, "I am not willing to picket." Then, with more animation in her manner, she questioned her friend. "You didn't tell us how your strike ended. What happened after the children went home?"
"Well, I'm not saying how their fathers and mothers took it, but they won at the mill all right. The ogre was given another job."
"I'm glad of that," with a pleasant, propitiatory smile; "I was afraid you had only won a holiday."
But Kathleen would not be cajoled. "No, indeed," she answered; "we got our rights by standing out for them."
"Don't be a fool, Kitty," the Major remarked abruptly.
Kathleen looked at him, bewildered and aggrieved. Formerly he had been her champion when in this same room she had been attacked by bourgeois guests armed with conventional arguments. Then he had spoken more bitterly than she and had been placed by her among her revolutionists. For him to turn upon her now was not only unkind but treacherous. What did she know about him after all, she thought? Only the common talk of this place where he was accounted one familiar with strange lands who could speak in any tongue that sounded over Madame's tables.
"You're an old man, Major," she said a little stiffly, "and I was counting you a good comrade. Maybe you'll show me the folly in saying that you get your rights by standing out for them."
"You didn't get your rights," was the blunt answer. "When you led the children out you merely exchanged one foreman for another a little less brutal. You did not win the sunshine and the fresh air for every day."
"But that has come now," Applebaum said.