And Clara exclaimed: “He’s the nicest little man in the world! This time I have flew the coop on him forever.” She smiled at her sheet, so that no one within hearing should be depressed, just because she had troubles.
“I don’t know!” said Clara, with her broad, slow smile, “it’s pretty hard for a woman to come home from her day’s work, and find the man stretched on the floor before her sleeping it off. Isn’t it?” she asked, as if by no means sure and wishing to hear what others thought.
From behind two sheets:
“It certainly is hard!”
Rumbling up over McGibney’s sheet:
“You hadn’t ought to put up with it! It is hard!”
“Isn’t it!” cried Clara, as if crying. “There, I was right, after all! I thought, myself, it was hard, and here’s others thinks the same. And then, when you’re getting along nice, both working and laying by a little, and going to buy the brass lamp in Mason’s window, and get a whole half-ton of coal instead of by the bag, which is robbery, and then he goes out to change the savings into one big bill which you’d never be tempted to break, and comes back in the morning without one cent—” Clara paused. She would not like to be ridiculed for regarding trifles too seriously. “I don’t think he does right by me—does he?”
Both sheets agitated. Over both sheets:
“He certainly don’t do right by you!”