very scheme for a huge success I took now an aggravated delight. All my
recent tolerance gone, I threw into my work an intensity that I had not
felt in months.

And Eleanore smiled contentedly, as though she knew what she was about.
When at last the time came for Joe to leave, she was twice as friendly
to him as I.

CHAPTER VII

But on coming home one evening two or three weeks later, I found
Eleanore reading aloud to our son with a most preoccupied look on her
face.

"Joe Kramer is coming to dinner," she said. "He called up this morning
and said he'd like to see us again. Sue is coming, too, as it happens.
She dropped in this afternoon."

Sue arrived a few minutes later, and at once I thought to myself I had
never seen her look so well. For once she had taken time to dress. She
had done her dark hair in a different way. Her color, which had been
poor of late, to-night was most becomingly high, and those fascinating
eyes of hers were bright with a new animation.

"She has found a fine new hobby," I thought.

Her whole attitude to us was one of eager friendliness. She made much of
what we had done for Joe.

"You've no idea," she told me, "how he feels about you both." She was
speaking of this when Joe came in.

He, too, appeared to me different. Into his blunt manner had crept a
certain awkwardness, his gruff voice had an anxious note at times and
his eyes a hungry gleam. Poor old Joe, I thought. It must be hard,
despite all his talk, to see what he had missed in life, to feel what a
sacrifice he had made. He had thrown everything aside, love, marriage,
home, all personal ties--to tackle this bleak business of slums. The
more pity he had such a twisted view. And as presently, in reply to
Sue's questions, he talked about the approaching strike, my irritation
at his talk grew even sharper than before.

"Your stokers and dock laborers," I interrupted hotly, "are about as
fit to build up a mew world as they are to build a Brooklyn Bridge! When
I compare them to Eleanore's father and his way of going to work"--I
broke off in exasperation. "Can't you see you're all just floundering in
a perfect swamp of ignorance?"

"No," said Joe. "I don't see that----"

"I'm mighty glad you don't," said Sue. Eleanore turned on her abruptly.

"Why are _you_ glad, Sue?" she asked.

"Because," Sue answered warmly, "he's where every one of us ought to be!
He's doing the work we all ought to be doing!"

"Then why don't