off deh eart',' I says, like dat. See? 'Go teh hell
an' git off deh eart',' like dat. Den deh blokie he got wild. He says
I was a contempt'ble scoun'el, er somet'ing like dat, an' he says I was
doom' teh everlastin' pe'dition an' all like dat. 'Gee,' I says, 'gee!
Deh hell I am,' I says. 'Deh hell I am,' like dat. An' den I slugged
'im. See?"

With Jimmie in his company, Pete departed in a sort of a blaze of glory
from the Johnson home. Maggie, leaning from the window, watched him as
he walked down the street.

Here was a formidable man who disdained the strength of a world full of
fists. Here was one who had contempt for brass-clothed power; one
whose knuckles could defiantly ring against the granite of law. He was
a knight.

The two men went from under the glimmering street-lamp and passed into
shadows.

Turning, Maggie contemplated the dark, dust-stained walls, and the
scant and crude furniture of her home. A clock, in a splintered and
battered oblong box of varnished wood, she suddenly regarded as an
abomination. She noted that it ticked raspingly. The almost vanished
flowers in the carpet-pattern, she conceived to be newly hideous. Some
faint attempts she had made with blue ribbon, to freshen the appearance
of a dingy curtain, she now saw to be piteous.

She wondered what Pete dined on.

She reflected upon the collar and cuff factory. It began to appear to
her mind as a dreary place of endless grinding. Pete's elegant
occupation brought him, no doubt, into contact with people who had
money and manners. It was probable that he had a large acquaintance of
pretty girls. He must have great sums of money to spend.

To her the earth was composed of hardships and insults. She felt
instant admiration for a man who openly defied it. She thought that if
the grim angel of death should clutch his heart, Pete would shrug his
shoulders and say: "Oh, ev'ryt'ing goes."

She anticipated that he would come again shortly. She spent some of
her week's pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for a lambrequin.
She made it with infinite care and hung it to the slightly-careening
mantel, over the stove, in the kitchen. She studied it with painful
anxiety from different points in the room. She wanted it to look well
on Sunday night when, perhaps, Jimmie's friend would come. On Sunday
night, however, Pete did not appear.

Afterward the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation. She was
now convince