put in books and newspapers, and he could work in the printing office
and deliver the Kansas City and St. Louis and Chicago dailies for Mr.
Brotherton, and do so much better than he can carpentering. I tell John,
if we can just keep our boy among nice people until he's twenty-five,
he'll stay with 'em. Now look at Lide Bowman. Mary Adams, we know she
was a smart woman until she married Dick and now just see her--living
down there with the shanty trash and all those ignorant foreigners, and
she's growing like 'em. She's lost two of her babies, and that seems to
be weighing on her mind, and I can't persuade her to pick up and move
out of there. It's like being in another world. And Mary Adams--let me
tell you--Casper Herdicker has gone into the mine. Yes, sir, he closed
his shop and is going to work in the mine, because he can make three
dollars a day. But law me! you'll not see Hildy Herdicker moving down
there. She'll keep her millinery store and live with the white folks."

The dishes were put away, and in the long afternoon Mary Adams sat
sewing as Rhoda Kollander rambled on. For the third time Rhoda came back
to comment upon the fact that Grant Adams had quit working in the
printing office--a genteel trade, and had stopped delivering papers for
Mr. Brotherton's newspaper stand--a rather high vocation, and was
degrading himself by learning the carpenter's trade, when Mary Adams cut
into the current of the stream of talk.

"Well, my dear, it was this way. There are two reasons why Grant is
learning the carpenter's trade. In the first place, the boy has some
sort of a passion to cast his lot among the poor. He feels they are
neglected and--well, he has a sort of a fierce streak in him to fight
for the under dog, and--"

"Well, law me, Mary--don't I know that? Hasn't Freddie told me time and
again how Grant used to fight for Freddie when he was a little boy and
the big boys plagued him. Grant whipped the whole school for teasing a
little half-witted boy once--did you know that?" Mary Adams shook her
head. "Well, he did, and--well now, isn't that nice. I can see just how
he feels!" And she could. Never lived a more sympathetic soul than
Rhoda. And as she rocked she said: "Of course, if that's the reason--law
me, Mary, you never can tell how these children are going to turn out.
Why, I tell John--"

"And the other reason is, Rhoda, that he is earning two dollars a day as
a carpenter's helper, and since Kenyon came we