Try as he would, he could not introduce any
habit of thrift into the family. Dan's money came and went, and on
Saturday nights there was not only nothing left, but often a deficit.
Dan, skillfully worked upon outside, began to develop a grievance, also,
and on his rare evenings at home or at the table he would voice his
wrongs.

"It's just hand to mouth all the time," he would grumble. "A fellow
working for the Cardews never gets ahead. What chance has he got,
anyhow? It takes all he can get to live."

Willy Cameron began to see that the trouble was not with Dan, but with
his women folks. And Dan was one of thousands. His wages went for food,
too much food, food spoiled in cooking. There were men, with able women
behind them, making less than Dan and saving money.

"Keep some of it out and bank it," he suggested, but Dan sneered.

"And have a store bill a mile long! You know mother as well as I do. She
means well, but she's a fool with money."

He counted his hours from the time he entered the mill until he left it,
but he revealed once that there were long idle periods when the heating
was going on, when he and the other men of the furnace crew sat and
waited, doing nothing.

"But I'm there, all right," he said. "I'm not playing golf or riding in
my automobile. I'm on the job."

"Well," said Willy Cameron, "I'm on the job about eleven hours a day,
and I wear out more shoe leather than trouser seats at that. But it
doesn't seem to hurt me."

"It's a question of principle," said Dan doggedly. "I've got no personal
kick, y'understand. Only I'm not getting anywhere, and something's got
to be done about it."

So, on the evening of the day after Lily had made her declaration of
independence, Willy Cameron made his way rather heavily toward the Boyd
house. He was very tired. He had made one or two speeches for Hendricks
already, before local ward organizations, and he was working hard at his
night class in metallurgy. He had had a letter from his mother, too,
and he thought he read homesickness between the lines. He was not at all
sure where his duty lay, yet to quit now, to leave Mr. Hendricks and the
Boyds flat, seemed impossible.

He had tried to see Lily, too, and failed. She had been very gentle over
the telephone, but, attuned as he was to every inflection of her voice,
he had thought there was unhappiness in it. Almost despair. But she had
pleaded a week of engagements.

"I'm sorry," she had said. "I'll c