She put her hand through my arm, and we went into the house. The curtains were drawn, a fire was crackling on the hearth, the lamps were lighted, and as I dropped into a chair this living-room of ours seemed to take on the air of a refuge from the vague, threatening sinister things of the world without. I felt I had never valued it before. Maude took up her sewing and sat down beside the table.
"Hugh," she said suddenly, "I read something in the newspaper—"
My exasperation flared up again.
"Where did you get that disreputable sheet?" I demanded.
"At the dressmaker's!" she answered. "I—I just happened to see the name,
Paret."
"It's just politics," I declared, "stirring up discontent by misrepresentation. Jealousy."
She leaned forward in her chair, gazing into the flames.
"Then it isn't true that this poor man, Galligan—isn't that his name?—was cheated out of the damages he ought to have to keep himself and his family alive?"
"You must have been talking to Perry or Susan," I said. "They seem to be convinced that I am an oppressor of the poor.
"Hugh!" The tone in which she spoke my name smote me. "How can you say that? How can you doubt their loyalty, and mine? Do you think they would undermine you, and to me, behind your back?"