"'Y'o hae been separated by unspeaking space from dis humble leetle place for some hours longer that zis boosom could uncomplainingly indure,—y'o have.'
"The child meant to say, in its coarse, brutal, unlettered way, that the man had been absent too long.
"John Smith helped himself to some more pork and beans. He was a man, you know, and could not answer without deep thought. He took his knife and wiped it thoughtfully upon her head, and then sawed off a sickly yellow curl. When he placed that curl on the same plate with the pork and beans, its coils seemed like those of some golden snake.
"'Girletta,' he said, with the ring of iron in his tones, 'why is it that the beasts never want to marry? God made them as He made us; yet they never ask priests to make them slaves to each other.'
"The sickly little waif cringed closer to that inscrutable great heart which underlaid a soul of eternal questioning. She shuddered like a wounded hog, but could not answer. An inward fever was devouring her.
"The man took some more pork and beans. 'Girletta,' he said, almost fiercely, 'the beasts teach me a lesson; but I will not, dare not, shallnot heed it. I want a home; my heart demands some one to work for me; to support me. I am weary of labor, and want some one to labor and toil and suffer for me, and do my washing. I love you. Have me.'
"The atom of womanhood contorted her diseased features into the pale twist of agony, and her bosom heaved with stormy wavings, like the side of a tortured and choking brute. Falling to the ground, she writhed, and struggled, and kicked convulsively, as though seized with some inward pang. Then she rose slowly to her shattered little feet, and drew an old cupboard to the middle of the wretched cave and beat her head against it.
"It was the child's first taste of that great mystery of perfect love which woman is doomed to share with the thing called Man.
"'Yo'air indulging in secret cachinnation, at the expense of my sair heart.'
"The child meant that he was laughing at her.