that
she might play the man herself.

"Why should she be a-comin' in an' a-robbin' us of our pay?" muttered
a coarse, red-faced virago, her hair in a frowse about her head, her
slatternly dress open at the throat. "Oi'll be one to go an' pull her
off the dock and jump on her. What's she a-doin', any-how, puttin' down
prices! Ef her ole man had a leg to walk on, instid of his lyin' to-day
a cripple in the hospital, he'd be back and be a-runnin' things."

"She's doin' what she's a right to do," broke out Mrs. Todd indignantly.
Mrs. Todd was the wife of the foreman at the brewery, and an old friend
of Tom's. Tom had sat up with her child only the week before. Indeed,
there were few women in the tenements, for all their outcry, who did
not know how quick had been her hand to help when illness came, or the
landlord threatened the sidewalk, or the undertaker insisted on his
money in advance.

"It's not Tom Grogan that's crooked," Mrs. Todd continued, "an' ye all
know it. It's that loafer, Dennis Quigg, and that old sneak, Crimmins.
They never lifted their hands on a decent job in their lives, an' don't
want to. When my man Jack was out of work for four months last winter,
and there wasn't a pail of coal in the house, wasn't Quigg gittin' his
four dollars a day for shootin' off his mouth every night at O'Leary's,
an' fillin' the men's heads full of capital and rights? An' Dan McGaw's
no better. If ye're out for jumpin' on people, Mrs. Moriarty, begin with
Quigg an' some of the bummers as is runnin' the Union, an' as gits paid
whether the men works or not."

"Bedad, ye're roight," said half a dozen women, the tide turning
suddenly, while the excitement grew and spread, and other women came in
from the several smaller tenements.

"Is the trouble at the brewery?" asked a shrunken-looking woman,
opening a door on the corridor, a faded shawl over her head. She was
a new-comer, and had been in the tenement only a week or so--not long
enough to have the run of the house or to know her neighbors.

"Yes; at Schwartz's," said Mrs. Todd, stopping opposite her door on the
way to her own rooms. "Your man's got a job there, ain't he?"

"He has, mum; he's gateman--the fust job in six months. Ye don't think
they'll make him throw it up, do ye, mum?"

"Yes; an' break his head if he don't. Thet's what they did to my man
three years gone, till he had to come in with the gang and pay 'em two
dollars a month," replied Mrs. Todd.

"But