“You can clean the pictures to-day, Margaret.  Be careful, my child.”

And Margaret would remember the greasy Irishman who had tucked them under his arm, and flung them into a cart, her blood growing hotter in her veins.

It was the same through all the house; there was not a niche in the bare rooms that did not recall a something gone,—­something that should return.  She willed that, that evening, standing by the dim fire.  What women will, whose eyes are slow, attentive, still, as this Margaret’s, usually comes to pass.

The red fire-glow suited her; another glow, warming her floating fancy, mingled with it, giving her quiet purpose the trait of heroism.  The old spirit of the dead chivalry, of succor to the weak, life-long self-denial,—­did it need the sand waste of Palestine or a tournament to call it into life?  Down in that trading town, in the thick of its mills and drays, it could live, she thought.  That very night, perhaps, in some of those fetid cellars or sunken shanties, there were vigils kept of purpose as unselfish, prayer as heaven-commanding, as that of the old aspirants for knighthood.  She, too,—­her quiet face stirred with a simple, childish smile, like her father’s.

“Why, mother!” she said, stroking down the gray hair under the cap, “shall you sleep here all night?” laughing.

A cheery, tender laugh, this woman’s was,—­seldom heard,—­not far from tears.

Mrs. Howth roused herself.  Just then, a broad, high-shouldered man, in a gray flannel shirt, and shoes redolent of the stable, appeared at the door.  Margaret looked at him as if he were an accusing spirit,—­coming down, as every woman must, from heights of self-renunciation or bold resolve, to an undarned stocking or an uncooked meal.

“Kittle’s b’ilin’,” he announced, flinging in the information as a general gratuity.

“That will do, Joel,” said Mrs. Howth.

The tone of stately blandness which Mrs. Howth erected as a shield between herself and “that class of people” was a study:  a success, I think; the resume of her experience in the combat that had devoured half her life, like that of other American housekeepers.  “Be gentle, but let them know their place, my dear!” The class having its type and exponent in Joel stopped at the door, and hitched up its suspenders.

“That will do, Joel,” with a stern suavity.

Some idea was in Joel’s head under the brush of red hair,—­probably the “anarchic element.”

“Uh was wishin’ toh read the G’zette.”  Whereupon he advanced into the teeth of the enemy and bore off the newspaper, going before Margaret, as she went to the kitchen, and seating himself beside a flaring tallow-candle on the table.

Reading, with Joel, was not the idle pastime that more trivial minds find it:  a thing, on the contrary, to be gone into with slow spelling, and face knitted up into savage sternness, especially now, when, as he gravely explained to Margaret, “in his opinion the crissis was jest at hand, and ev’ry man must be seein’ ef the gover’ment was carryin’ out the views of the people.”