y, as he explained, Sarah was set, so that the dream
must remain a dream.

"It's all in the game," Billy sighed. "It's played to rules. Some one
has to get knocked out, I suppose."

A little later, while Bert was off on a fresh diatribe, Billy became
aware that he was making comparisons. This house was not like his house.
Here was no satisfying atmosphere. Things seemed to run with a jar. He
recollected that when they arrived the breakfast dishes had not yet been
washed. With a man's general obliviousness of household affairs, he had
not noted details; yet it had been borne in on him, all morning, in a
myriad ways, that Mary was not the housekeeper Saxon was. He glanced
proudly across at her, and felt the spur of an impulse to leave his
seat, go around, and embrace her. She was a wife. He remembered her
dainty undergarmenting, and on the instant, into his brain, leaped the
image of her so appareled, only to be shattered by Bert.

"Hey, Bill, you seem to think I've got a grouch. Sure thing. I have.
You ain't had my experiences. You've always done teamin' an' pulled
down easy money prizefightin'. You ain't known hard times. You ain't ben
through strikes. You ain't had to take care of an old mother an' swallow
dirt on her account. It wasn't until after she died that I could rip
loose an' take or leave as I felt like it.

"Take that time I tackled the Niles Electric an' see what a work-plug
gets handed out to him. The Head Cheese sizes me up, pumps me a lot of
questions, an' gives me an application blank. I make it out, payin' a
dollar to a doctor they sent me to for a health certificate. Then I got
to go to a picture garage an' get my mug taken for the Niles Electric
rogues' gallery. And I cough up another dollar for the mug. The Head
Squirt takes the blank, the health certificate, and the mug, an' fires
more questions. DID I BELONG TO A LABOR UNION?--ME? Of course I told'm
the truth I guess nit. I needed the job. The grocery wouldn't give me
any more tick, and there was my mother.

"Huh, thinks I, here's where I'm a real carman. Back platform for me,
where I can pick up the fancy skirts. Nitsky. Two dollars, please.
Me--my two dollars. All for a pewter badge. Then there was the
uniform--nineteen fifty, and get it anywhere else for fifteen. Only that
was to be paid out of my first month. And then five dollars in change in
my pocket, my own money. That was the rule.--I borrowed that five from
Tom Donovan, the policeman