o send the boy off.

"I knew you would find a way," she said excitedly.

"I wish I'd found it twenty years ago," I said regretfully. "Then
you'd have a lawyer for a husband instead of a--."

"Hush," she answered putting her hand over my mouth. "I've a man for a
husband and that's all I care about."

The way she said it made me feel that after all being a man was what
counted and that if I could live up to that day by day, no matter what
happened, then I could be well satisfied. I guess the city directory
was right when before now it couldn't define me any more definitely
than, "clerk." And there is about as much man in a clerk as in a
valet. They are both shadows.

The boy fell in with my plans eagerly, for the gymnasium work made him
forget the study part of the programme. The next day I took him up
there and saw him introduced to the various department heads. I paid
his membership fee and they gave him a card which made him feel like a
real club man. I tell you it took a weight off my mind.

On the Monday following our arrival in our new quarters, I rose at
five-thirty, put on my overalls and had breakfast. I ate a large bowl
of oatmeal, a generous supply of flapjacks, made of some milk that had
soured, sprinkled with molasses, and a cup of hot black coffee--the
last of a can we had brought down with us among the left-over kitchen
supplies.

For lunch Ruth had packed my box with cold cream-of-tartar biscuit,
well buttered, a bit of cheese, a little bowl of rice pudding, two
hard-boiled eggs and a pint bottle of cold coffee. I kissed her goodby
and started out on foot for the street where I was to take up my work.
The foreman demanded my name, registered me, told me where to find a
shovel and assigned me to a gang under another foreman. At seven
o'clock I took my place with a dozen Italians and began to shovel. My
muscles were decidedly flabby, and by noon I began to find it hard
work. I was glad to stop and eat my lunch. I couldn't remember a meal
in five years that tasted as good as that did. My companions watched
me curiously--perhaps a bit suspiciously--but they chattered in a
foreign tongue among themselves and rather shied away from me. On that
first day I made up my mind to one thing--I would learn Italian before
the year was done, and know something more about these people and
their ways. They were the key to the contractor's problem and it would
pay a man to know how to handle them. As I watched the bo