“Oh, for heaven's sake!” cried Edward. “You reformers are all alike—you talk and talk and talk!”
“I can tell you the reason for that, Edward—a man like you can shut his eyes, but he can't shut his ears!”
“Well, can't you let up on me for awhile—long enough to get out of this place? I feel as if I were sitting on the top of a volcano, and I've no idea when it may break out again.”
Hal began to laugh. “All right,” he said; “I guess I haven't shown much appreciation of your visit. I'll be more sociable now. My next business is in Pedro, so I'll go that far with you. There's one thing more—”
“What is it?”
“The company owes me money—”
“What money?”
“Some I've earned.”
It was Edward's turn to laugh. “Enough to buy you a shave and a bath?”
He took out his wallet, and pulled off several bills; and Hal, watching him, realised suddenly a change which had taken place in his own psychology. Not merely had he acquired the class-consciousness of the working-man, he had acquired the money-consciousness as well. He was actually concerned about the dollars the company owed him! He had earned those dollars by back- and heart-breaking toil, lifting lumps of coal into cars; the sum was enough to keep the whole Rafferty family alive for a week or two. And here was Edward, with a smooth brown leather wallet full of ten- and twenty-dollar bills, which he peeled off without counting, exactly as if money grew on trees, or as if coal came out of the earth and walked into furnaces to the sound of a fiddle and a flute!