“Doesn’t she?”

“Give back affection?...  That’s just it.  I don’t know.  I’ve been there and seen him come home.  She acts queerly.  As soon as she hears him coming up the stairs she seems to shut up.  It’s as if she turned out the lights. ...  Where the ordinary girl would be running to kiss him and make a fuss over him she—­doesn’t do anything. ...  And she keeps watching him.  And there’s something in her eyes like—­well, like she was blaming herself for something, and was sorry for him. ...  She seems, when she’s with him, as if she were trying to make up to him for something—­and didn’t know how.”

“Readjustment,” Lightener grunted.  “They jumped into the thing kerplunk.  Queer start-off.”

“I don’t know. ...  She’s a dear—­and he’s a dear. ...  It isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen.  It’s something peculiar.”

“Must be his fault.  I told him—­”

“It isn’t his fault.”  Hilda spoke with certainty.  “If you could see him you’d know it.  His manner toward her—­why, dad, I never saw a man so sweet and gentle and patient.”

“Maybe that’s the trouble.  Too much patience is as bad as too much raising the devil.”

“No. ...  It’s something.”

She turned to leave the room, when her father called after her:  “Bonbright quit chawing castings to-night.  He doesn’t know it, but to-morrow he gets a new job. ...  Has all of that he needs.  Knows how it feels.”

“What’s he going to do now?”

“Nice, light, pleasant job. ...  He’ll be passing rear axles—­made by his father—­down a chute to the assembling track.  Bet he’ll need Saint Jacob’s oil on his back to-morrow night.  Give his wife a job.”

“Why,” she scolded, for she was on intimate terms with the factory, “that’s common labor.  He’ll be working with Wops and Guineas and Polacks.”

He nodded.  “If he stands the gaff I’ll ease up on him.”

“If he doesn’t?”

Lightener shrugged his shoulders.

“Dad,” said Hilda, “sometimes you make me Mad. ...”

When the factory heard what had become of Bonbright it laughed.  Bonbright was aware it laughed, and he set his teeth and labored.  Beside what he was doing now the machine shop had been play.  Rear axles are not straws to be tossed about lightly.  Nor are Wops, Guineas, Polacks, smelling of garlic, looking at one with unintelligent eyes, and clattering to one another in strange tongues, such workfellows as make the day pass more quickly. ...

Bonbright had to pass down a certain number of axles an hour.  At definite, brief intervals a fragment of an automobile would move along the assembling track and pause beneath his spout—­and his axle must be ready.  There was a constant procession of fragments, and a second’s delay brought up to his ears pointed commentary from below. ...  The more pointed that those below knew who was above them.