The laughter went out of Mary's face. “Oh! It's that!” she said, in a flat tone. The vision of the snow-white horse and the soft and lustrous robe was gone. “Ye can never do anything of that sort here!”
“Why not?”
“'Tis the men in this place. Don't ye remember what I told ye at Mr. Rafferty's? They're cowards!”
“Ah, Mary, it's easy to say that. But it's not so pleasant being turned out of your home—”
“Do ye have to tell me that?” she cried, with sudden passion. “Haven't I seen that?”
“Yes, Mary; but I want to do something—”
“Yes, and haven't I wanted to do something? Sure, I've wanted to bite off the noses of the bosses!”
“Well,” he laughed, “we'll make that a part of our programme.” But Mary was not to be lured into cheerfulness; her mood was so full of pain and bewilderment that he had an impulse to reach out and take her hand again. But he checked that; he had come to divert her energies into a safe channel!
“We must waken these men to resistance, Mary!”
“Ye can't do it, Joe—not the English-speakin' men. The Greeks and the Bulgars, maybe—they're fightin' at home, and they might fight here. But the Irish never—never! Them that had any backbone went out long ago. Them that stayed has been made into boot-licks. I know them, every man of them. They grumble, and curse the boss, but then they think of the blacklist, and they go back and cringe at his feet.”