“You hadn’t ought to come out such a night as this, I’m afraid, Mr. Atkins,” said Fanny.

“He’s been out jest as bad weather as this all winter,” said the young man, Nahum Beals, in an unexpectedly deep voice.  “The workers of this world can’t afford to take no account of weather.  It’s for the rich folks to look out betwixt their lace curtains and see if it looks lowery, so they sha’n’t git their gold harnesses and their shiny carriages, an’ their silks an’ velvets an’ ostrich feathers wet.  The poor folks that it’s life and death to have to go out whether or no, no matter if they’ve got an extra suit of clothes or not.  They’ve got to go out through the drenchin’ rain and the snow-drifts, to earn money so that the rich folks can have them gold-plated harnesses and them silks and velvets.  Joe’s been out all winter in weather as bad as this, after he’s been standin’ all day in a shop as hot as hell, drenched with sweat.  One more time won’t make much difference.”

“It would be ’nough sight better for me if it did,” said Joseph Atkins, chokingly, and still with that same seeming of hurry.

Fanny had gone out to the dining-room, and now she returned stirring some whiskey and molasses in a cup.

“Here,” said she, “you take this, Mr. Atkins; it’s real good for a cough.  Andrew cured a cold with it last month.”

“Mine ain’t a cold, and it can’t be cured in this world, but it’s better for me, I guess,” said Joe Atkins, chokingly, but he took the cup.

“Now, you hadn’t ought to talk so,” Fanny said.  “You had ought to think of your wife and children.”

“My life is insured,” said Joseph Atkins.

“We ain’t got no money and no jewelry, and no silver to leave them we love—­all we’ve got to leave ’em is the price of our own lives,” said Nahum Beals.

“I wish I had got my life insured,” Andrew said.

“Don’t talk so, Andrew,” Fanny cried, with a shudder.

“My life is insured for two thousand dollars,” Joe Atkins said, with an odd sort of pride.  “I had it done three years ago.  My lungs was sound as anybody’s then, but that very next summer I worked up under that tin roof, and came out as wet as if I’d been dipped in the river, into an east wind, and got a chill.  It was the only time I ever struck luck—­to get insured before that happened.  Nobody’d look at me now, and I dunno what they’d do.  I ’ain’t laid up a cent, I’ve had so much sickness in my family.”

“If you hadn’t worked that summer in the annex under that tin roof, you’d be as well as you ever was now,” said Nahum Beals.

“I worked there ’longside of you that summer,” said Andrew to Joe, with bitter reminiscence.  “We used to strip like a gang of convicts, and we stood in pools of sweat.  It was that awful hot summer, and the room had only that one row of windows facing the east, and the wind never that way.”

“Not till I came out of the shop that night I took the chill,” said Joe.