voice came to them with a singular clearness in the quiet of the
momentary stop. They were in the midst of a mournful expanse of bare
ploughed fields, frozen and brown. The motorman released his brake,
letting the brass arm swing noisily about, the conductor sat down again,
and as the car began to move forward again he closed his eyes. He looked
very tired and, now that an almost instant sleep had relaxed his
features, pathetically young.

"How pale he is," said Lydia, wishing to break the silence with a
harmless remark. "He looks tired to death."

"He probably is just that," said Rankin, wincing. "It's sickening, the
way they work. Seven days a week, most of them, you know."

"No; I didn't know," cried Lydia, shocked. "Why, that's awful. When do
they see their families?"

"They don't. One of them, whose house isn't far from mine, told me that
he hadn't seen his children, except asleep, for three weeks."

"But something ought to be done about it!" The girl's deep-lying
instinct for instant reparation rose up hotly.

"Are they so much worse off than most American business men?" queried
Rankin. "Do any of them feel they can take the time to see much more
than the outside of their children; and isn't seeing them asleep about
as--"

Lydia cut him short quickly. "You're always blaming them for that," she
cried. "You ought to pity them. They can't help it. It's better for the
children to have bread and butter, isn't it--"

Rankin shook his head. "I can't be fooled with that sort of talk--I've
lived with too many kinds of people. At least half the time it isn't a
question of bread and butter. It's a question of giving the children
bread and butter and sugar rather than bread and butter and father. Of
course, I'm a fanatic on the subject. I'd rather leave off even the
butter than the father--let alone the sugar."

"But here's this very motorman you know about--what could he do?"

"They're not forced by the company to work seven days a week--only
they're not given pay enough to let them take even one day off without
feeling it. This very motorman I was talking with got to telling me why
he was working so extra hard just then. His oldest daughter is going to
graduate from the high school and he wants to give her a fine graduating
dress, as good as anybody's, and a graduating 'present.' It seems that's
the style now for graduating girls. He said he and his wife wanted her
always to remember that day as a bright spot, an