onger through sections she had learned to dread.
Accustomed for some years to far longer and lonelier tramps in the
wintry evenings, she thought nothing of tripping to and fro between the
Lambert and the rather crowded little house in which she dwelt. Mart and
his wife and babies still sojourned there, and the babies waxed strong
and loud and lusty on Aunt Jenny's bounty, never caring whose fingers
earned the porridge, so long as their share was ample and frequent. Mart
was out of work, and correspondingly out of elbows and temper. Mart had
taken to continual meetings and to such drink as he could get treated to
or credit for, and still the mother condoned, the wife complained, and
Jenny carried the family load. Mart loved to tread the rostrum boards
and portray himself as a typical victim of corporation perfidy and
capitalistic greed. The railway company from which he had seceded
refused to take him back, and other companies, edified by the reports of
his speeches in _The Switch Light_, _The Danger Signal_, and other
publications avowedly devoted to the interest of the down-trodden
operatives of the railway and manufacturing companies, thought that in a
winter when many poor fellows were out of work through no fault of their
own, beyond having exercised the right of suffrage the wrong way, the
few vacancies should be given to men more likely to render faithful
service. Mart's wife, impressed with the idea that she must do
something, took in sewing, and took the sewing to ask Jenny to show her
how, which in nine cases out of ten Jenny did practically. If the
little money thus earned had gone to pay for the babies' milk or Mart's
whiskey bills, Jenny would have been grateful; but even these shillings,
earned with her numbed and weary fingers, somehow found their way to
Mart's broad palm and thence to the dram-shop, though not to that which
had claims for goods already delivered. And then followed scenes that
covered the poor girl with shame and indignation. To her office at the
library one winter evening, when Wells was reading the late mail, and
Mr. Forrest, seated at a neighboring desk with a big atlas before him
was far away among the glinting _pickelhaubes_ on the banks of the
Moselle, a man came with an account which he wished Miss Wallen to
settle. It was Martin Wallen's bar bill for the autumn months at
Donnelly's Shades, and the girl flushed with mortification. "This is
something with which I have nothing to do," s