But Miss Emory hadn't known this before. She elevated her eyebrows in mild surprise. She was not sure she understood.
“I didn't know that he was one of the officers of the road,” with deceptive indifference.
“He's not. He's a cabinet-maker,” explained the literal Oakley, to whom a cabinet-maker was quite as respectable as any one else. There was a brief pause, while Constance turned this over in her mind. It struck her as very singular that Oakley's father should be one of the hands. Perhaps she credited him with a sensitiveness of which he was entirely innocent.
She rested her chin in her hands and gazed out into the dusty street.
“Isn't it infinitely pathetic to think of that poor little man and his work?” going back to Joyce. “Do you know, I could have cried? And his wife's faith, it is sublime, even if it is mistaken.” She laughed in a dreary fashion. “What is to be done for people like that, whose lives are quite uncompensated?”
To Oakley this opened up a field for future speculation, but he approved of her interest in Joyce. It was kindly and sincere, and it was unexpected. He had been inclined to view her as a proud young person, unduly impressed with the idea of her own beauty and superiority. It pleased him to think he had been mistaken.
They were joined by the doctor, who had caught a part of what Constance said, and divined the rest.
“You see only the pathos. Joyce is just as well off here as he would be anywhere else, and perhaps a little better. He makes a decent living with his pictures.” As he spoke he crossed the porch and stood at her side, with his hand resting affectionately on her shoulder.
“I guess there's a larger justice in the world than we conceive,” said Oakley.
“But not to know, to go on blindly doing something that is really very dreadful, and never to know!”