they do,
there's a hundred women and three times that many children that'll go
hungry. This woman here's got a girl herself that hasn't drawed a well
breath for six months, an' her man's been idle all winter, an' only just
now got a job at Schwartz's, tending gate. Now, what'll I do? Shall I
chuck up the job or stick?"

The old man looked into the desolate, weary face of the woman and then
at Tom. Then he said slowly:--

"Well, child, ye kin do widout it, an' maybe t' others can't."

"Ye've got it straight," said Tom; "that's just what I think meself."
Then, turning to the stranger:--

"Go home and tell yer man to go to bed. I'll touch nothin' that'll break
the heart of any woman. The job's McGaw's. I'll throw up me bid."

IX. WHAT A SPARROW SAW

Ever since the eventful morning when Carl had neglected the Big Gray for
a stolen hour with Jennie, Cully had busied himself in devising ways
of making the Swede's life miserable. With a boy's keen insight, he had
discovered enough to convince him that Carl was "dead mashed on Jennie,"
as he put it, but whether "for keeps" or not he had not yet determined.
He had already enriched his songs with certain tender allusions to their
present frame of mind and their future state of happiness. "Where was
Moses when the light went out!" and "Little Annie Rooney" had undergone
so subtle a change when sung at the top of Mr. James Finnegan's voice
that while the original warp and woof of those very popular melodies
were entirely unrecognizable to any but the persons interested, to
them they were as gall and wormwood. This was Cully's invariable way
of expressing his opinions on current affairs. He would sit on the
front-board of his cart,--the Big Gray stumbling over the stones as he
walked, the reins lying loose,--and fill the air with details of events
passing in the village, with all the gusto of a variety actor. The
impending strike at the brewery had been made the basis of a paraphrase
of "Johnnie, get your gun;" and even McGaw's red head had come in for
its share of abuse to the air of "Fire, boys, fire!" So for a time this
new development of tenderness on the part of Carl for Jennie served to
ring the changes on "Moses" and "Annie Rooney."

Carl's budding hopes had been slightly nipped by the cold look in Tom's
eye when she asked him if it took an hour to give Jennie a tattered
apron. With some disappointment he noticed that except at rare
intervals, and only when Tom