“What was the matter?”
“I got into a quarrel with a foreman—not my own boss, sir—and struck him.”
“I see,” said the other, and meditated for a few moments. “What do you wish to do?” he asked.
“Anything, sir,” said Jurgis—“only I had a broken arm this winter, and so I have to be careful.”
“How would it suit you to be a night watchman?”
“That wouldn’t do, sir. I have to be among the men at night.”
“I see—politics. Well, would it suit you to trim hogs?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jurgis.
And Mr. Harmon called a timekeeper and said, “Take this man to Pat Murphy and tell him to find room for him somehow.”
And so Jurgis marched into the hog-killing room, a place where, in the days gone by, he had come begging for a job. Now he walked jauntily, and smiled to himself, seeing the frown that came to the boss’s face as the timekeeper said, “Mr. Harmon says to put this man on.” It would overcrowd his department and spoil the record he was trying to make—but he said not a word except “All right.”