And the most envious had always
maintained that she meant at the time to put him away forever
where no one could find him, so that she might play the man
herself.
"Why should she be a-comin' in an' a-robbin' us of our pay?"
muttered a coarse, red-faced virago, her hair in a frowse about
her head, her slatternly dress open at the throat. "Oi'll be one
to go an' pull her off the dock and jump on her. What's she
a-doin', any-how, puttin' down prices! Ef her ole man had a leg
to walk on, instid of his lyin' to-day a cripple in the hospital,
he'd be back and be a-runnin' things."
"She's doin' what she's a right to do," broke out Mrs. Todd
indignantly. Mrs. Todd was the wife of the foreman at the
brewery, and an old friend of Tom's. Tom had sat up with her
child only the week before. Indeed, there were few women in the
tenements, for all their outcry, who did not know how quick had
been her hand to help when illness came, or the landlord
threatened the sidewalk, or the undertaker insisted on his money
in advance.
"It's not Tom Grogan that's crooked," Mrs. Todd continued, "an' ye
all know it. It's that loafer, Dennis Quigg, and that old sneak,
Crimmins. They never lifted their hands on a decent job in their
lives, an' don't want to. When my man Jack was out of work for
four months last winter, and there wasn't a pail of coal in the
house, wasn't Quigg gittin' his four dollars a day for shootin'
off his mouth every night at O'Leary's, an' fillin' the men's
heads full of capital and rights? An' Dan McGaw's no better.
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