a dirk knife, and I know all the dirty, rotten things of life by direct contact.  So when I disagree with the demands of the men who build my vessels I know why I’m disagreeing.  And I usually do disagree ... because if they’ve got guts enough in them they’ll fight.  And I like a good fight.  That’s why potting clerks is such a tame business.  It’s almost as sickening as a rabbit drive.”

He finished with a gesture of contempt and reached for his goblet of water.

Starratt decided not to dodge the issue; if Hilmer wished to throw any further mud he was perfectly ready to stand up and be the target.

“Well, and what’s the remedy for stiffening the backbone of my sort?” he asked, with polite insolence.

“Stiffening the backbone of the middle class is next to impossible.  They’ve been bowing and scraping until there’s a permanent kink in their backs!”

“The ’middle class’?” Helen echoed, incredulously.

Hilmer was smiling widely.  There was a strange, embarrassed silence.  Starratt was the first to recover himself.  “Why, of course!...  Why not?  You didn’t think we belonged to any other class, did you?”

It was Mrs. Hilmer who changed the subject.  “What nice corn pudding this is, Mrs. Starratt!  Would you mind telling me how you made it?”

Hostilities ceased with the black coffee, and in the tiny living room Hilmer grew almost genial.  His life had been varied and he was rather proud of it—­that is, he was proud of the more sordid details, which he recounted with an air of satisfaction.  He liked to dwell on his poverty, his lack of opportunity, his scant education.  He had the pride of his achievements, and he was always eager to throw them into sharper relief by dwelling upon the depths from which he had sprung.  He had his vulgarities, of course, but it was amazing how well selected they were—­the vulgarities of simplicity rather than of coarseness.  And while he talked he moved his hands unusually for a man of northern blood, revealing the sinister thumb and forefinger, which to Fred Starratt grew to be a symbol of his guest’s rough-hewn power.  Hilmer was full of raw-boned stories of the sea and he had the seafarer’s trick of vivid speech.  Even Helen Starratt was absorbed ... a thing unusual for her.  At least in her husband’s hearing she always disclaimed any interest in the brutalities.  She never read about murders or the sweaty stories in the human-interest columns of the paper or the unpleasant fictioning of realists.  Her excuse was the threadbare one that a trivial environment always calls forth, “There are enough unpleasant things in life without reading about them!”

The unpleasant things in Helen Starratt’s life didn’t go very far beyond half-tipsy maids and impertinent butcher boys.