"And you are contented to work at the Union Stock Yards?"
"No, I don't say that; but it's a stepping-stone to better things, don't you see? It's a living for me for the present, and perhaps by and by I'll sell some of my poems and stories, and then I'll be able to leave the yards."
He turned sharply in his seat, and I felt him staring at me.
"When on earth do you get time to write, if you work all day from nine till five-thirty?"
"Sometimes I get up very early," I said, "at five or six, and then I write a bit; and unless the girls bother me at night, I have a chance then, too, though I wish the lights didn't go out at ten."
"But you will kill yourself working in that way."
"No, I won't," I declared eagerly. "I'm awfully strong, and, then, writing isn't work, don't you see? It's a real pleasure, after what I've had to do all day, really it is, a sort of balm almost."
"But you can't keep that up. I don't want you to. I want you to go to school, to begin all over again. If you can, you must forget these days. I want you to blot them out from your mind altogether."
I thought of that question he had asked me on the train when I had read to him my poem: "Wouldn't you like to go to school?" Now, indeed, neither my pride nor my vanity was piqued. I could even smile at his tone of authority. He was so sure I would obey him; but I was not going to let him do anything in the world for me unless he could say to me what I was able to say to him.