ub about our shoulders
now and then would have kept our tempers sweeter."

Bertha, in rich new garments, seemed as alien to the scene as any fine
lady visiting among the slums. She was struggling, too, between disgust
of her sister-in-law's slovenly house and untidy dress, and the good
humor, tender sentiment and innate motherliness of her nature. There was
charm in her voice and in her big gray eyes. Irish to the core, she
could storm at one child and coo with another an instant later. She was
like Mart, or rather Mart became every moment more of her kind and less
of the bold and remorseless desperado he had once seemed to be. The
deeper they dug into the past the more of his essential kinship to this
woman he discovered. He greeted her children with kindly interest,
leaving a dollar in each chubby, dirty fist, and when McArdle came into
the room Fan had quite conquered her awe of Bertha's finery.

McArdle was a small bent man, with a black beard, a pale serious face
and speculative eyes. He looked like a wondering, rather cautious animal
as he came in. He wore a cheap gray suit and a celluloid collar, and was
as careless in his way as his wife. It was plain that he was gentle,
absent-minded, and industrious.

He listened to his wife's voluble explanations in silence, inwardly
digesting all that was said, then shook hands--still without a word. And
when all these preliminaries were over he laid his hat aside and ran his
fingers through his thin hair with a perplexed and troubled gesture,
asking, irrelevantly: "How's the weather out there?"

Nobody saw the humor of this but his wife, who explained: "Pat is a
fiend on the weather. He was raised on a farm, ye see, and he can't get
over it. I say to him: 'What difference does the state o' the weather
make to you, that's under a roof all day?' But divil a change does it
make in him. The first thing in the morning he turns to the weather
report."

McArdle's eyes showed traces of a smile. "If it weren't for the papers
and the weather reports, me days would be alike. But sit by," he added,
hospitably, waving his hand towards the table, on which the dinner was
steaming.

They were drawing up to the board when a puffing and blowing, and the
furious clatter of feet announced the inrushing of the children.

Not the mother's shrill whooping, but the sight of the strange guests,
transformed them into mutes. The carriage outside had filled them with
wild alarms, but the sight