manage him.

It seemed as if he had taken all of his mother's strength--had left
nothing for those that might come after him. Ona was with child again
now, and it was a dreadful thing to contemplate; even Jurgis, dumb and
despairing as he was, could not but understand that yet other agonies
were on the way, and shudder at the thought of them.

For Ona was visibly going to pieces. In the first place she was
developing a cough, like the one that had killed old Dede Antanas. She
had had a trace of it ever since that fatal morning when the greedy
streetcar corporation had turned her out into the rain; but now it was
beginning to grow serious, and to wake her up at night. Even worse than
that was the fearful nervousness from which she suffered; she would have
frightful headaches and fits of aimless weeping; and sometimes she would
come home at night shuddering and moaning, and would fling herself down
upon the bed and burst into tears. Several times she was quite beside
herself and hysterical; and then Jurgis would go half-mad with fright.
Elzbieta would explain to him that it could not be helped, that a woman
was subject to such things when she was pregnant; but he was hardly to
be persuaded, and would beg and plead to know what had happened. She
had never been like this before, he would argue--it was monstrous and
unthinkable. It was the life she had to live, the accursed work she had
to do, that was killing her by inches. She was not fitted for it--no
woman was fitted for it, no woman ought to be allowed to do such work;
if the world could not keep them alive any other way it ought to kill
them at once and be done with it. They ought not to marry, to have
children; no workingman ought to marry--if he, Jurgis, had known what a
woman was like, he would have had his eyes torn out first. So he would
carry on, becoming half hysterical himself, which was an unbearable
thing to see in a big man; Ona would pull herself together and fling
herself into his arms, begging him to stop, to be still, that she would
be better, it would be all right. So she would lie and sob out her
grief upon his shoulder, while he gazed at her, as helpless as a wounded
animal, the target of unseen enemies.

Chapter 15

The beginning of these perplexing things was in the summer; and each
time Ona would promise him with terror in her voice that it would not
happen again--but in vain. Each crisis would leave Jurgis more and more
frightened, more