Sylvia took a boarder—­the high-school principal, Horace Allen—­and she also made jellies and cakes, and baked bread for those in East Westland who could afford to pay for such instead of doing the work themselves.  She was a delicate woman, and Henry knew that she worked beyond her strength, and the knowledge filled him with impotent fury.  Since the union had come into play he did not have to work so many hours in the shop, and he got the same pay, but he worked as hard, because he himself cultivated his bit of land.  He raised vegetables for the table.  He also made the place gay with flowers to please Sylvia and himself.  He had a stunted thirst for beauty.

In the winter he found plenty to do in the extra hours.  He sawed wood in his shed by the light of a lantern hung on a peg.  He also did what odd jobs he could for neighbors.  He picked up a little extra money in that way, but he worked very hard.  Sometimes he told Sylvia that he didn’t know but he worked harder than he had done when the shop time was longer.  However, he had been one of the first to go, heart and soul, with the union, and he had paid his dues ungrudgingly, even with a fierce satisfaction, as if in some way the transaction made him even with his millionaire employers.  There were two of them, and they owned houses which appeared like palaces in the eyes of Henry and his kind.  They owned automobiles, and Henry was aware of a cursing sentiment when one whirred past him, trudging along, and covered him with dust.

Sometimes it seemed to Henry as if an automobile was the last straw for the poor man’s back:  those enormous cars, representing fortunes, tyrannizing over the whole highway, frightening the poor old country horses, and endangering the lives of all before them.  Henry read with delight every account of an automobile accident.  “Served them right; served them just right,” he would say, with fairly a smack of his lips.

Sylvia, who had caught a little of his rebellion, but was gentler, would regard him with horror.  “Why, Henry Whitman, that is a dreadful wicked spirit!” she would say, and he would retort stubbornly that he didn’t care; that he had to pay a road tax for these people who would just as soon run him down as not, if it wouldn’t tip their old machines over; for these maniacs who had gone speed-mad, and were appropriating even the highways of the common people.

Henry had missed the high-school principal, who was away on his spring vacation.  He liked to talk with him, because he always had a feeling that he had the best of the argument.  Horace would take the other side for a while, then leave the field, and light another cigar, and let Henry have the last word, which, although it had a bitter taste in his mouth, filled him with the satisfaction of triumph.  He loved Horace like a son, although he realized that the young man properly belonged to the class which he hated, and that, too, although he was manifestly poor and obliged to work for his living.  Henry was, in his heart of hearts, convinced that Horace Allen, had he been rich, would have owned automobiles and spent hours in the profitless work-play of the golf links.  As it was, he played a little after school-hours.  How Henry hated golf!  “I wish they had to work,” he would say, savagely, to Horace.