is pipe and spoke with emphasis.

"Oh, I've no sympathy with that. Those are just bums, nothing else. They
wouldn't do a day's job if you gave it to them. They don't mean to work.
All they want is a bite and a drink and a dirty hole to sleep in until
they can get the drink again. They ought to be forced to work. The
trouble is the men don't have to work long enough. With their eight-hour
day you see them in the saloon before they go to work getting a drink.
And they're after it again when the day's work is over or some other
foolishness."

"You fool!" Kathleen said, her eyes blazing, and she lifted her hand as
if to strike him.

He seized it in his own and carried it to his lips.

"I'm wise enough to love you, Kathleen."

Hertha found this an excellent time to slip from her seat and into the
kitchen. When she came back the two were seated as before, but talking
of indifferent things, and the light had gone out of Kathleen's face.

CHAPTER XVII

It was Saturday evening and early December. Kathleen was away for the
night on a case, and Hertha, after a dinner alone, decided to go to the
library to secure a book to read on Sunday. She was quite accustomed by
this time to going out in the evening by herself; yet it always seemed a
little an adventure, the streets were so gaily lighted and the people so
many. She put a raincoat over her suit for the sky was lowering and
there was a chilliness in the air, a harsh feeling that made her shiver
and turn gladly, her short walk over, into the warm, brightly lighted
reading-room.

Accustomed all her life to having few books about her, with no
opportunity for individual choice, she made mistakes at first amid the
plethora of volumes that the city offered. It had been disappointing,
for instance, to reach home in the evening to learn that _The Four
Georges_ was not about four little boys or to find out that _Sesame and
Lilie_ had nothing to do with flowers. But part of the stack was open,
and she soon found what she desired and drenched herself in the world of
romance. Under the guidance of the librarian she read two novels of
Dickens, and carried home and returned with suspicious swiftness one
each of Scott and Thackeray; under her own guidance she became intimate
with the heroines of those best sellers that a conscientious library
board permitted upon the open shelves. Rather to her relief the
librarian this evening was very busy and she went at once to the open
st