“Well, I don’t know that I would say exactly a pig’s tail,” he returned, bracketing his words with his most engaging smile, “but I should say out of highly refractory material.”
His eyes in the meantime pried up her eyelids and asked 189what was wrong with that. And her eyes were coy about it, and would not answer directly.
He went on speaking: “The whole labor trouble, it seems to me, lies in this whistle trade. A smattering of education has made labor dissatisfied. The laboring people are trying to get out of their place, and as a result we have strikes and lawlessness and disrespect for courts, and men going around and making trouble in industry by ‘doing something for labor.’”
“Yes,” she replied, “that is very true.”
But her eyes–her big, liquid, animal eyes were saying, “How handsome you are–you man–you great, strong, masterful man with your brown ulster and brown hat and brown tie, and silken, black mustache.” To which his eyes replied, “And you–you are superb, and such lips and such teeth,” while what he trusted to words was:
“Yes–I believe that the laborer in the mines, for instance, doesn’t care so much about what we would consider hardship. It’s natural to him. It would be hard for us, but he gets used to it! Now, the smelter men in that heat and fumes–they don’t seem to mind it. The agonizing is done largely by these red-mouthed agitators who never did a lick of work in their lives.”
Their elbows touched for a moment as they walked. He drew away politely and her eyes said:
“That’s all right: I didn’t mind that a bit.” But her lips said: “That’s what I tell Mr. Fenn, and, anyway, the work’s got to be done and cultivated people can’t do it. It’s got to be done by the ignorant and coarse and those kind of people.”
His eyes flinched a little at “those kind” of people and she wondered what was wrong. But it was only for a moment that they flinched. Then they told her eyes how fine and desirable she looked, and she replied eyewise with a droop such as the old wolf might have used in replying to Red Riding Hood, “The better to eat you, my child.” Then his voice spoke; his soft, false, vain, mushy voice, and asked casually: “By the way, speaking of Mr. Fenn–how is Henry? I don’t see him much now since he’s quit the law and gone into real estate.”
190His eyes asked plainly: Is everything all right in that quarter? Perhaps I might–