he old woman! You didn't hear
that my Tom got the run yesterday, did you?"

"Did he? What a pity! I'm very sorry," said Nellie.

"Everybody'll be out of work and then what'll we all do?" said Mrs.
Philips, evidently cheered, nevertheless, by companionship in misfortune.

"What'll we all do! There'd never be anybody at all out of work if
everybody was like me and Nellie there," answered the amazon.

"What did he get the run for?" asked Nellie.

"What can we women do?" queried Mrs. Phillips, doleful still.

"Wait a minute till I can tell you! You don't give a body time to begin
before you worry them with questions about things you'd hear all about it
if you'd just hold your tongues a minute. You're like two blessed babies!
It was this way, Mrs. Phillips, as sure as I'm standing here. Tom got
trying to persuade the other men in the yard--poor sticks of men they
are!--to have a union. I've been goading him to it, may the Lord
forgive me, ever since Miss Nellie there came round one night and
persuaded my Tessie to join. 'Tom,' says I to him that very night, 'I'll
have to be lending you one of my old petticoats, the way the poor weak
girls are beginning to stand up for their rights, and you not even daring
to be a union man. I never thought I'd live to be ashamed of the father
of my children!' says I. And yesterday noon Tom came home with a face on
him as long as my arm, and told me that he'd been sacked for talking
union to the men.

"'It's a man you are again, Tom,' says I. 'We've lived short before and
we can live it again, please God, and it's myself would starve with you a
hundred times over rather than be ashamed of you,' says I. 'Who was it
that sacked you?' I asked him.

"'The foreman,' says Tom. 'He told me they didn't want any agitators
about.'

"'May he live to suffer for it,' says I. 'I'll go down and see the boss
himself.'

"So down I went, and as luck would have it the boy in the front office
wasn't educated enough to say I was an old image, I suppose, for would
you believe it I actually heard him say that there was a lady, if you
please, wanting to see Mister Paritt very particularly on personal
business, as I'd told him. So of course I was shown in directly, the very
minute, and the door was closed on me before the old villain, who's a
great man at church on Sundays, saw that he'd made a little mistake.

"'What do you want, my good woman?' says he, snappish like. 'Very sorry,'
says he, when I'd to