Eva did not seem to notice Amabel’s crying.  She stood in that horrible inflexibility, with eyes like black stones fixed on something unseeable.

Fanny clutched her violently by the arm and shook her.

“Eva Tenny,” said she, “you behave yourself.  What if he has run away?  You ain’t the first woman whose husband has run away.  I’d have more pride.  I wouldn’t please him nor her enough.  If he’s as bad as that, you’re better off rid of him.”

Eva turned on her sister, and her calm broke up like ice under her fire of passion.

“Don’t you say one word against him, not one word!” she shrieked, throwing off Fanny’s hand.  “I won’t hear one word against my husband.”

Then little Amabel joined in.  “Don’t you say one word against my papa!” she cried, in her shrill, childish treble.  Then she sobbed convulsively, and pushed Ellen away.  “Go away!” she said, viciously, to her.  She was half mad with terror and bewilderment.

“Don’t you say one word against Jim,” said Eva again.  “If ever I hear anybody say one word against him I’ll—­”

“You don’t mean you’re goin’ to stan’ up for him, Eva Tenny?”

“As long as I draw the breath of life, and after, if I know anything,” declared Eva.  Then she straightened herself to her full height, threw back her shoulders, and burst into a furious denunciation like some prophetess of wrath.  The veins on her forehead grew turgid, her lips seemed to swell, her hair seemed to move as she talked.  The others shrank back and looked at her; even little Amabel hushed her sobs and stared, fascinated.  “Curses on the grinding tyranny that’s brought it all about, and not on the poor, weak man that fell under it!” she cried.  “Jim ain’t to blame.  He’s had bigger burdens put on his shoulders than the Lord gave him strength to bear.  He had to drop ’em.  Jim has tried faithful ever since we were married.  He worked hard, and it wa’n’t never his fault that he lost his place, but he kept losin’ it.  They kept shuttin’ down, or dischargin’ him for no reason at all, without a minute’s warnin’.  An’ it wa’n’t because he drank.  Jim never drank when he had a job.  He was just taken up and put down by them over him as if he was a piece on a checker-board.  He lost his good opinion of himself when he saw others didn’t set any more by him than to shove him off or on the board as it suited their play.  He began to think maybe he wa’n’t a man, and then he began to act as if he wasn’t a man.  And he was ashamed of his life because he couldn’t support me and Amabel, ashamed of his life because he had to live on my little earnin’s.  He was ashamed to look me in the face, and ashamed to look his own child in the face.  It was only night before last he was talkin’ to me, and I didn’t know what he meant then, but I know now.  I thought then he meant something else, but now I know what he meant.  He sat a long time leanin’ his head on his hands, whilst I was sewin’ on wrappers, after Amabel had gone to bed, and finally he looks up and says, ‘Eva, you was right and I was wrong.’