sy and vile. They have to wash. In Europe we roughnecks know
that wash-houses are provided by the company, but here," he cried
excitedly, "the company doesn't provide even a faucet; instead the
men--father and son and maybe a boarder or two have to go home--into
those little one and two roomed houses the company has built, and strip
to the hide with the house full of children and wash. What if your
girlhood had been used to seeing things like that--could you laugh as
you laugh now?" He looked up at her savagely. "Oh, I know they're
ignorant foreigners and little better than animals and those things
don't hurt them--only if you had a little girl who had to be in and out
of the single room of your home when the men came home to wash up--"

He broke off, and then began again, "Why, I was talking to a dago last
night at the shaft mouth going down to work on the graveyard shift and
he said that he came here believing he would find a free, beautiful
country in which his children could grow up self-respecting men and
women, and then he told me about his little girls living down there
where all the vice is scattered through the tenements, and--about this
washing up proposition, and now one of the girls is gone and they can't
find her." He threw out a despairing hand; "So I'm a roughneck,
Laura--I'm a jay, and I'm going to stay with them."

"But your people," she urged. "What about them--your father and
brothers?"

"Jap's climbing out. Father's too old to get in. And Kenyon--" he
flinched, "I hope to God I'll have the nerve to stay when the test on
him comes." He turned to the girl passionately: "But you--you--oh,
you--I want you to know--" He did not finish the sentence, but rose and
walked into the house and called: "Dad--Kenyon--come on, it's getting
late. Stars are coming out."

Half an hour later Tom Van Dorn, in white flannels, with a red silk tie,
and with a white hat and shoes, came striding across the lawn. His black
silky mustache, his soft black hair, his olive skin, his shining black
eyes, his alert emotional face, dark and swarthy, was heightened even in
the twilight by the soft white clothes he wore.

"Hello, popper-in-law," he cried. "Any room left on the veranda?"

"Come in, Thomas," piped the older man. "The girls are doing the dishes,
Bedelia and Laura, and we'll just sit out two or three dances."

The young man lolled in the hammock shaded by the vines. The elder
smoked and reflected. Then slowly and by