. Then what? They worked me for two weeks
without pay, breakin' me in."

"Did you pick up any fancy skirts?" Saxon queried teasingly.

Bert shook his head glumly.

"I only worked a month. Then we organized, and they busted our union
higher'n a kite."

"And you boobs in the shops will be busted the same way if you go out on
strike," Mary informed him.

"That's what I've ben tellin' you all along," Bert replied. "We ain't
got a chance to win."

"Then why go out?" was Saxon's question.

He looked at her with lackluster eyes for a moment, then answered

"Why did my two uncles get killed at Gettysburg?"

CHAPTER VIII

Saxon went about her housework greatly troubled. She no longer devoted
herself to the making of pretties. The materials cost money, and she
did not dare. Bert's thrust had sunk home. It remained in her quivering
consciousness like a shaft of steel that ever turned and rankled. She
and Billy were responsible for this coming young life. Could they be
sure, after all, that they could adequately feed and clothe it and
prepare it for its way in the world? Where was the guaranty? She
remembered, dimly, the blight of hard times in the past, and the
plaints of fathers and mothers in those days returned to her with a new
significance. Almost could she understand Sarah's chronic complaining.

Hard times were already in the neighborhood, where lived the families
of the shopmen who had gone out on strike. Among the small storekeepers,
Saxon, in the course of the daily marketing, could sense the air of
despondency. Light and geniality seemed to have vanished. Gloom pervaded
everywhere. The mothers of the children that played in the streets
showed the gloom plainly in their faces. When they gossiped in the
evenings, over front gates and on door stoops, their voices were subdued
and less of laughter rang out.

Mary Donahue, who had taken three pints from the milkman, now took
one pint. There were no more family trips to the moving picture shows.
Scrap-meat was harder to get from the butcher. Nora Delaney, in the
third house, no longer bought fresh fish for Friday. Salted codfish, not
of the best quality, was now on her table. The sturdy children that ran
out upon the street between meals with huge slices of bread and butter
and sugar now came out with no sugar and with thinner slices spread more
thinly with butter. The very custom was dying out, and some children
already had desisted from piecing between me