ts helping or hindering their union. All his thoughts were
there; he accepted the family because it was a part of Ona. And he was
interested in the house because it was to be Ona's home. Even the tricks
and cruelties he saw at Durham's had little meaning for him just then,
save as they might happen to affect his future with Ona.

The marriage would have been at once, if they had had their way; but
this would mean that they would have to do without any wedding feast,
and when they suggested this they came into conflict with the old
people. To Teta Elzbieta especially the very suggestion was an
affliction. What! she would cry. To be married on the roadside like a
parcel of beggars! No! No!--Elzbieta had some traditions behind her;
she had been a person of importance in her girlhood--had lived on a big
estate and had servants, and might have married well and been a lady,
but for the fact that there had been nine daughters and no sons in the
family. Even so, however, she knew what was decent, and clung to her
traditions with desperation. They were not going to lose all caste, even
if they had come to be unskilled laborers in Packingtown; and that Ona
had even talked of omitting a _veselija_ was enough to keep her stepmother
lying awake all night. It was in vain for them to say that they had
so few friends; they were bound to have friends in time, and then the
friends would talk about it. They must not give up what was right for a
little money--if they did, the money would never do them any good, they
could depend upon that. And Elzbieta would call upon Dede Antanas to
support her; there was a fear in the souls of these two, lest this
journey to a new country might somehow undermine the old home virtues of
their children. The very first Sunday they had all been taken to mass;
and poor as they were, Elzbieta had felt it advisable to invest a little
of her resources in a representation of the babe of Bethlehem, made
in plaster, and painted in brilliant colors. Though it was only a foot
high, there was a shrine with four snow-white steeples, and the Virgin
standing with her child in her arms, and the kings and shepherds and
wise men bowing down before him. It had cost fifty cents; but Elzbieta
had a feeling that money spent for such things was not to be counted too
closely, it would come back in hidden ways. The piece was beautiful on
the parlor mantel, and one could not have a home without some sort of
ornament.

The cost of