“It’s a first-rate idea, Joe,” said the boss, a big, capable fellow who had worked his way up from the bottom.  “I could move you right along the line if you had a better education.  I have a good offer up in Chicago next year; if you can get more book sense in your head, I will take you along.”

“Where can I get it at?” asked Joe, somewhat dubious of his own power of achievement.

“Night school,” said the boss.  “I know a man that teaches in the Settlement over on Burk Street.  I’ll put you in there if you like.”

Now, the prospect of going to school to a man who had been head of a family for seven years, who had been the champion scrapper of the South End, who was in the midst of a critical love affair, was trebly humiliating.  But Joe was game, and while he determined to keep the matter as secret as possible, he agreed to the boss’s proposition.

“You’re mighty stingy with yourself these days!” said Mittie Beaver one night a month later, when he stopped on his way to school.

Joe grinned somewhat foolishly.  “I come every evenin’,” he said.

“For ’bout ten minutes,” said Mittie, with a toss of her voluminous pompadour; “there’s some wants more’n ten minutes.”

“Ben Schenk?” asked Joe, alert with jealousy.

“I ain’t sayin’,” went on Mittie.  “What do you do of nights, hang around the hall?”

“Naw,” said Joe indignantly.  “There ain’t nobody can say they’ve sawn me around the hall sence I’ve went with you!”

“Well, where do you go?”

“I’m trainin’,” said Joe evasively.

“I don’t believe you like me as much as you used to,” said Mittie plaintively.

Joe looked at her dumbly.  His one thought from the time he cooked his own early breakfast, down to the moment when he undressed in the cold and dropped into his place in bed between Gussie and Dick, was of her.  The love of her made his back stop aching as he bent hour after hour over the machine; it made all the problems and hard words and new ideas at night school come straight at last; it made the whole sordid, ugly day swing round the glorious ten minutes that they spent together in the twilight.

“Yes, I like you all right,” he said, twisting his big, grease-stained hands in embarrassment.  “You’re the onliest girl I ever could care about.  Besides, I couldn’t go with no other girl if I wanted to, ’cause I don’t know none.”

Is it small wonder that Ben Schenk’s glib protestations, reinforced by Mrs. Beaver’s own zealous approval, should have in time outclassed the humble Joe?  The blow fell just when the second term of night school was over, and Joe was looking forward to long summer evenings of unlimited joy.

He had bought two tickets for a river excursion, and was hurrying into the Beavers’ when he encountered a stolid bulwark in the form of Mrs. Beaver, whose portly person seemed permanently wedged into the narrow aperture of the front door.  She sat in silent majesty, her hands just succeeding in clasping each other around her ample waist.  Had she closed her eyes, she might have passed for a placid, amiable person, whose angles of disposition had also become curves.  But Mrs. Beaver did not close her eyes.  She opened them as widely as the geography of her face would permit, and coldly surveyed Joe Ridder.