er Lathers about doin' yer wurruk,"
began McGaw, resting one foot on a pile of barrow-planks, his elbow on
his knee. "I does all the haulin' to the foort. Surgint Duffy knows me.
I wuz along here las' week, an' see ye wuz put back fer stone. If I'd
had the job, I'd had her unloaded two days befoore."

"You're dead right, Dan," said Lathers, with an expression of disgust.
"This woman business ain't no good, nohow. She ought to be over her
tubs."

"She does her work, though," Babcock said, beginning to see the drift of
things.

"Oh, I don't be sayin' she don't. She's a dacint woman, anough; but thim
b'ys as is a-runnin' her carts is raisin' h--ll all the toime."

"And then look at the teams," chimed in Lathers, with a jerk of his
thumb toward the dock--"a lot of staggering horse-car wrecks you
couldn't sell to a glue-factory. That big gray she had a-hoistin' is
blind of an eye and sprung so forrard he can't hardly stand."

At this moment the refrain of a song from somewhere near the board fence
came wafting through the air,--

"And he wiped up the floor wid McGeechy."

McGaw turned his head in search of the singer, and not finding him,
resumed his position.

"What are your rates per ton?" asked Babcock.

"We're a-chargin' forty cints," said McGaw, deferring to Lathers, as if
for confirmation.

"Who's 'we'?"

"The Stevedores' Union."

"But Mrs. Grogan is doing it for thirty," said Babcock, looking straight
into McGaw's eyes, and speaking slowly and deliberately.

"Yis, I heared she wuz a-cuttin' rates; but she can't live at it. If I
does it, it'll be done roight, an' no throuble."

"I'll think it over," said Babcock quietly, turning on his heel. The
meanness of the whole affair offended him--two big, strong men vilifying
a woman with no protector but her two hands. McGaw should never lift a
shovel for him.

Again the song floated out; this time it seemed nearer,--

". . . wid McGeechy--
McGeechy of the Fourth."

"Dan McGaw's giv'n it to you straight," said Lathers, stopping for a
last word, his face thrust through the window again. "He's rigged for
this business, and Grogan ain't in it with him. If she wants her work
done right, she ought to send down something with a mustache."

Here the song subsided in a prolonged chuckle. McGaw turned, and caught
sight of a boy's head, with its mop of black hair thrust through a
crownless hat, leaning over a water cask. Lathers turned, too, and