iving.' 'So have slave-drivers, Mr. Simmons.' 'Every profession,' I
said, 'has got its dirty jobs, ma'am. And that's a fact.' 'And will
have,' she said, 'so long as professional men consent to do the dirty
work of their employers.' 'And where should I be, I should like to
know,' I said, 'if I went on that lay? I've got to take the rough with
the smooth.' 'Well,' she said, 'Mr. Freeland and I will take Tryst and
the little ones in at present.' Good-hearted people, do a lot for the
laborers, in their way. All the same, she's a bit of a vixen. Picture of
a woman, too, standin' there; shows blood, mind you! Once said, all
over--no nagging. She took the little girl off with her. And pretty
small I felt, knowing I'd got to finish that job, and the folk outside
gettin' nastier all the time--not sayin' much, of course, but lookin' a
lot!" The agent paused in his recital and gazed fixedly at a bluebottle
crawling up the windowpane. Stretching out his thumb and finger, he
nipped it suddenly and threw it in the grate. "Blest if that fellow
himself didn't turn up just as I was finishing. I was sorry for the man,
you know. There was his home turned out-o'-doors. Big man, too! 'You
blanky-blank!' he says; 'if I'd been here you shouldn't ha' done this!'
Thought he was goin' to hit me. 'Come, Tryst!' I said, 'it's not my
doing, you know!' 'Ah!' he said, 'I know that; and it'll be blanky well
the worse for THEM!' Rough tongue; no class of man at all, he is!
'Yes,' he said, 'let 'em look out; I'll be even with 'em yet!' 'None o'
that!' I told him; 'you know which side the law's buttered. I'm making
it easy for you, too, keeping your things in the wagon, ready to shift
any time!' He gave me a look--he's got very queer eyes, swimmin', sad
sort of eyes, like a man in liquor--and he said: 'I've been here twenty
years,' he said. 'My wife died here.' And all of a sudden he went as
dumb as a fish. Never let his eyes off us, though, while we finished up
the last of it; made me feel funny, seein' him glowering like that all
the time. He'll savage something over this, you mark my words!" Again
the agent paused, and remained as though transfixed, holding that face of
his, whose yellow had run into the whites of the eyes, as still as wood.
"He's got some feeling for the place, I suppose," he said suddenly; "or
maybe they've put it into him about his rights; there's plenty of 'em
like that. Well, anyhow, nobody likes his privat