lightning," answered Roger.

Ole nodded. "Sure she is. Now Emil, he's got two boys and three girls.
Canute, over there, you've got three little girls, ain't you? Yes--and
Oscar, you got one boy, and John Moore, he's got one boy. Now, listen
once, Rog. I tell you about myself and that tells you about all of us
here.

"I am born in Norway, the youngest of nine, and when I am ten years my
folks come to America. They come to give their children a chance to live
comfortable and not have to work like dogs all the time, just to keep
alive. All right. They come here to this town. My father gets a job and
my big brothers get a job and we all do fine. They put me into school
and my father says I can go clean through the University. Then he dies
and my brothers all marry and when I have just one year in the High
School I have to quit and go to work.

"All right! I get a job in a machine shop where a fellow named John
Moore has a machine next to mine. He's a good smart fellow. We're good
friends, many years. But he has a good education."

"He has not!" interrupted Roger, flatly. "He's never been in school
since he was twelve and he's supported himself ever since he was
twelve."

"He's educated all the same," insisted Ole.

"He taught himself everything he knows," Roger cried.

"All right! All right! Anyhow, he makes a new kind of a machine and
takes his savings and starts to make plowshares, ten a day, over in that
little brick house, there. And he works like the very devil. Why? Why,
so that little Roger Moore that's come along can have it easier than he
had. Same as I'm working for my little Olga and same as Canute and Emil
and Oscar is working."

"That's only part of it, with father, anyhow," Roger exclaimed. "Of
course, he's ambitious for me, but, you see, he has these ideas inside
of him that have to come out. He'd have done it if I'd never been born."

"He does it so's his children gets ahead. Every married man's that way.
Otherwise, why work?" This was Emil's contribution.

"All right," Ole pushed on. "Anyhow first thing I know I'm working for
John Moore and he's getting ahead while I'm staying in the same old
place, same old pay. And now listen. Already, when he gets ahead he
changes. He gets bossy and ugly. Seems like a man can't be a boss
without changing, without getting so he curses the fellow he bosses. And
Emil and Oscar and Canute and I and all of us say, 'Here's Moore getting
ahead. His boy goes through