The Outcast Manufacturers: A Hypertext Edition of Charles Hoy Fort's Book

The Outcast Manufacturers

A Hypertext Edition of Charles Hoy Fort's Book

Edited Mr. X

B.W. Dodge and Company

CHAPTER VII

      WHEN the Dunphy sisters had made themselves at home, they had said: "Now for a few days of solid rest!" each with a broom in her hand. "We deserve a little recreation, now," putting the blue curtains in place, tying cloths on brooms, and hunting for cobwebs; washing, ironing, sweeping, scrubbing. "We must rest up well before starting out again." "Bad luck to them; they dirtied me two fine aprons!" said Mrs. Birtwhistle. And that was their thanks.
      No more letters were scattered on the floor; no more letters had come. "We're just on the verge, if we can only pull through this bad spell," said Mr. Birtwhistle. No money; everything pawned. Whatever money the Dunphy sisters had, had gone to the celebrating of their release from servitude, so that back to servitude they would have to go, having saved enough for their office fees-- intelligence office, where they were registered.
      "If," said Mrs. Birtwhistle, "I had a sugar-barrel of wood on one side of the stove, and a sugar-barrel of coal on the other side of the stove, winter could come, for all of me." She had no sugar-barrel.
      "We're just on the verge," said Mr. Birtwhistle. "Sim. here's a good-looking girl coming down the street." He was sitting in. Miss Guffy's chair. Sim lying on the sofa.
      "I know you!" said Sim. "You want to get the sofa."
      Mr. Birtwhistle, seeming to groan a little: "My dear, get me my pipe."
      "Get it yourself! Where did you put it? Oh, I'll get it for you. Don't bother yourself. I suppose if I was dying, my last gasp would have to fetch me out of bed to find you something."
      "I suppose so," said Mr. Birtwhistle.
      "Pretty girl!" cried Miss Guffy-- her shiny, Esquimaux hair-- looking over his shoulder. "Do you call that a girl, in the first place? Oh, God save us!" Miss Guffy taking short steps about the room, mimicking an affected way of walking.
      "Don't be so bitter," said Asbury Parker.
      "Go 'long with you!" Miss Guffy good-naturedly answered.
      "Anyway," said Mr. Birtwhistle-- "get up, Sim, and give some one else a chance!-- anyway, we'll pull through; we never did get as far down as some people we've known. Do you remember the-- Dooley was their name?-- the people next door to us, in 387, and the paperhanger?"
      "In a room upstairs, Sim," said Mrs. Birtwhistle, "the paperhanger had left his supplies before starting to work, mid these people were so far down they actually stole half his bucket of paste to make cakes of. That's what you're coming to."
      "That or a job," said Sim indifferently; "I prefer that."
      "Job! job!" groaned Mr. Birtwhistle. "I hate the mere thought of a job. Sim, one way or another, always managed to pull through without getting down to labor. Oh, I hate it!"
      "You do, indeed!" said both. Mrs. Birtwhistle and Miss Guffy.
      "No, but I'm speaking seriously."
      "You are, that!"
      "I mean I have such a queer, inborn dread that isn't in my body but seemingly in my imagination. The mention of a job makes me see pictures of the children of Israel and their taskmasters; and of Siberian prisoners, ironed to their trucks, down in coal mines, working till exhausted, and dropping to sleep on the tracks, to be kicked to work in the morning. If I think of looking for work, I think of manacles being put on me; chains loaded on me, and whips whistling over my head. I don't think of work as something frightful to undergo, but as something impossible to undergo. I don't see myself as simply doing a day's work with other workers, but myself as ironed and tormented and condemned with other slaves in the galleys; not piling lumber, say, or keeping books, with other workers, but building pyramids, with tottering, exhausted, outraged wretches like myself. It makes me sick to my stomach!"
      "It does that!" said both Mrs. Birtwhistle and Miss Guffy.
      "Keep the sofa if you want it," said 'Mr. Birtwhistle. "I'm going out on the stoop and wait for the postman."
      Mr. Birtwhistle going out. The Miss Dunphys coming in.
      "Any luck, girls?" asked Mrs. Birtwhistle.
      "Oh, no end of good, Christian homes, if we'd go there!" said Emma, sitting on Sim's table. Katie taking off her hat-- her puddle-colored hair awry.
      "Plenty of faces where we'd have kind treatment and be one of the family, but not for me! no! no!" Emma's hat off-- her round head shaking so rapidly it seemed to revolve-- Emma, white and slim as a fountain-- her head like a ball on a fountain top.
      "Don't you like to be treated kindly?" asked Sim.
      "If any lady says, 'Good Christian home and kind treatment' to me, I knows what that means."
      "Indeed you do, girl, dear; fourteen dollars a month. May the divil fly away with their good Christian homes, may God forgive me for saying such a thing!"
      "Oh, my dear," said Emma, seizing Katie's arm, pulling Katie to the table, "come sit by me, and we'll have a nice chat. I'm sure you'll suit me."
      "Ho! ho!" cried Katie, beating out with a free hand-- her hair standing out like a splashed puddle.
      "We'll have a comfortable little chat, my dear. How old are you, and let me see your teeth, and what are your principal diseases, and how many followers have you, and where was your last place, and what were you doing eleven years ago, and how often convicted of crime between the ages of one and five?"
      "Ain't that one the divil!" cried Miss Guffy.
      "The cheek of them!" exclaimed Mrs. Birtwhistle.
      "Ask you all that," said Emma, "and tell you nothing in return; Put you off when you ask how many in the family, or when you go there, 'Oh, these is only the children, and the old aunt, and her sisters and only Uncle John, and that's only the brother!' Yes, and we could go to the country. Not me! New York for me!"
      "Don't like the country?" asked Sim indifferently. "My! Wouldn't it be funny if you got jobs at my uncle's, and I was back there? I couldn't be so friendly, then-- I mean--"
      "Oh, couldn't you?" asked Emma stiffly.
      Asbury Parker saying nothing, but shaking his head, as if to say, "That fellow doesn't know a thing at all."
      "I mean it would be queer--" stammered Sim; then, roughly: "I mean whatever I want to mean! I mean anything pleases me to mean."
      "Sure, it's all right," said Emma pleasantly.
      "Excuse me," said Sim humbly. "Then you don't like the country, Miss Dunphy?"
      "I loves it!" cried Katie, pulling away from her sister's grasp, better to express her delight. "Do you remember the little chicks we had to once, Emma-- one with a web-foot like a duck's to it? The little pond, Emma, with the whitewashed rocks in it, like they was ducks turned up, with their heads down under water? Will you ever forget the lightning-bugs, Emma-- the lot of us guessing where they'd be shining next! Oh, the country-- but New York!"
      "Which has treated you so good-- and me!" said Miss Guffy bitterly.
      "And you, Miss Dunphy?" asked Sim ingratiatingly.
      "Ah, 'tis that beautiful! and guessing where the crickets were chirping, do you remember, Katie? When you're looking at a green vine, and the wind makes it creeping silver. Katie, will vou ever forget the green hedge with the red and gold flowers spread over it? But New York for me!"
      "Yes, and it's been so good to you!"
      "I would not!" exclaimed Asbury Parker.
      "What?"
      "What?"
      "What's what?"
      "What what?"
      "That's all right, Asbury," said Mrs. Birtwhistle, laughing. "You don't have to take those stamps up to Mr. McKicker. Sim is just going."
      Mr. Birtwhistle returning to the room. Mr. Birtwhistle was reading a letter and laughing heartily.
      "Did he come?" asked Sim. "I didn't hear his whistle."
      "Well! well!" exclaimed Mr. Birtwhistle, leaning back, laughing.
      "Tell us!" urged Sim.
      "Well! well! this is the best yet."
      "It's some good news; anybody can see that."
      Mr. Birtwhistle laughed violently. He drawled: "Beastly interesting! so deuced interesting!" handing the letter to his wife.
      "I knew it!" cried Mrs. Birtwhistle, reading scarcely a line. "I knew it, because I dreamed of silver last night. I never knew it to fail. Guffy, didn't I tell you I dreamed of silver?"
      "We're dispossessed," said Mr. Birtwhistle. "Sim, it's about time"-- Miss Guffy screaming and clasping her hands-- "you got up and gave some one else the sofa."
      "Merciful Jesus!" exclaimed Miss Guffy. "What have we done? What have we done to bring this on ourselves?" The Miss Dunphys and Sim reading over Mrs. Birtwhistle's shoulder; Asbury Parker turning in his chair, asking: "No! is that right, Birt?"
      "Oh, yes! got a match? Anybody got a match?"
      "No," said Asbury. "It seems as if I can't keep one. I hide them around, when we're rich, and then have stores of them laid up for when we're poor. I don't seem to have any, though. I don't think much of these matches you get nowadays. When you were in Boston did you see the kind they sell there, a lot in a chunk? You pull them from the main chunk whenever you want them. They're those sulphur matches that take such a time burning, though."
      "Yes, but the heads of these others fly off. I set some lace curtains going with that kind once. They're positively dangerous."
      "Oh, my God! my God! what have we done-- what have we done?" cried Miss Guffy.
      "What'll we do?" asked Mrs. Birtwhistle.
      "You shut up!" cried Mr. Birtwhistle savagely. "Don't you speak to me! What'll we do, you fool? Hey, Sim, how do you feel when you're dispossessed? It's a curious feeling with me; there's a raging that I can feel, right here, in the top of my forehead; it's physical; I can feel it physically, a sort of thrill in my shoulders, and running down my arms. Delia, you'll be all right; you can go and stay with Mrs. Melody. And say, Sim, do you know, this sort of thing is a strong stimulant to the imagination. I can see myself, so plain, tramping up and down the Bowery-- Mrs. Melody will take you in, Delia-- Sim, I see myself in front of the Thalia Theater, dark from the elevated tracks; it's raining., spots of rain on the sidewalk and on my old yellowish hat-- and I guess I'm pretty hungry. Delia, I've brought you to it at last; we've always escaped this some way, but I've dragged you down to the bottom now, and I'm in despair. Sim, I was reading, some time ago, that if you express any emotion on your face, you'll actually feel that emotion; such as look melancholy and you'll actually feel sad. Let's all grin! We'll grin, for the sake of science, and see if we're happy."
      Mr. Birtwhistle, Sim and Asbury grimacing at one another, laughing, and laughing so that voluntary grinning was difficult.
      "Oh, how can you-- how can you?" cried Miss Guffy. "There'll be no luck in it."
      "Or old shoes!" Katie Dunphy was saying-- Emma laughing at the three who were attempting to grin without laughing. "There's always a disappointment when you dreams of old shoes."
      "Sim, I feel bad about dragging you down, too. What are you going to do?"
      "I'll be all right," said Sim, standing behind Mrs. Birtwhistle. "Hold the letter up more, Mrs. Birtwhistle, please. What's that line by the blot? 'Pay to-morrow at noon, or be required to vacate said premises. This letter is in legal form, and no other notice will be necessary.' Is that true? Let's make all the trouble we can for him. If I meet him in the hall, Birt! if I meet him! if I meet him, Birt, I'm going to run against him; and I'll say, 'Look here-- say, you, look out who you're pushing!' I'll say, 'You push me, will you?' He'll say he didn't. Then. Birt. true as I'm standing here, I'll--"
      "Do nothing."
      "I suppose not," said Sim, laughing.
      "That would be fine, if you did!" said Mrs. Birtwhistle. "Then you'd do your six months, as well as all the rest of the trouble."
      "I see him so plain." said Mr. Birtwhistle. "Sim, I don't wonder that the ancients thought the heart was the seat of the emotions; that feeling of passion, you know; so plain do I not only see myself, but actually feel the contact of my hurling him down the stoop; then, the very second after, I'm so calm, just sitting here smoking."
      "The poor old thing she is!" said Mrs. Birtwhistle. "The poor, miserable, old miser, so afraid of a few dollars that we wouldn't toss to a dog. The poor, miserable old thing!"
      "Oh, stop it! let it drop! It wears on one to hear so much on one subject. Sim, we may get a whole lot of orders to-morrow. I see so plain what I'll do. I am entering his office. I say, 'You want your money?' I hurl it in his face. And yet," added Mr. Birtwhistle, smiling, "I suppose we'd do the very same thing in his place, hey?"
      "Never! Couldn't be so mean! Never!" cried Mrs. Birtwhistle, Miss Guffy, Miss Dunphys.
      "Suppose so! Probably do the same thing ourselves." said Sim and Asbury.
      "Sure, Birt, 'tis well we have our office fees paid, anyway. I hope we wasn't bad luck to you. Katie, we can't pick and choose now, it seems."
      "But no Christian home and kind treatment!" declared Katie. "We're not down to that. Sure, the bad luck all seems to come at once, it do."
      "Or, no!" said Mr. Birtwhistle. "First I change the money into silver dollars. I hurl the handful of silver dollars into his face-- or here, not pay him at all?" added Mr. Birtwhistle, looking almost as cunning as Mr. Tunnan, despite Mr. Tunnan's facial advantages. "We'll not pay at all. Why shouldn't we win the month's rent? We can use it. If we get money to-morrow we'll put him to all the trouble we can, and move, and might as well have the rent ourselves."
      "Right! right! right!" cried Miss Guffy. "Now you are talking like a sensible man, Mr. Birtwhistle."
      "Or, no! I'll pay him." Miss Guffy sinking back in her chair. "I won't hurl the money in his face. I'll say or do something that won't be so tenement-house-like as that. I'll pay him, and say, '.My dear fellow, I'm so much obliged to you for the experience, don't you know. I have so often wondered how it feels to be dispossessed'-- often came near enough knowing, Delia-- 'to be dispossessed. Such experiences broaden one, my clear fellow, and though you are probably too ignorant to understand me, again I express my sense of obligation for the educational value of the experience'-- or I won't repeat the word 'experience' so often."
      "I don't know we have anything worth anything," said Mrs. Birtwhistle. "I hate to lose my tables-- Mrs. Maheffy won't get them. And, mark my words, Mrs. Schufelt will say nothing of the quarter she owes me. Even hope to win a beggarly quarter. And isn't it like we were in the desert? No one coming near us now! There's human nature for you! Human nature is rotten! There's no Mrs. Maheffy, and no sign of the Tunnans, is there? We're well let alone now, aren't we? Oh, I'd love to get up in the world again, just to let them see! Sim, weren't you going to read us your letter? Anyway, let's say no more."
      "Get up, Birt, and give me the sofa. I want to be comfortable while reading Uncle Sim's letter."
      "But what's the use?" asked Mr. Birtwhistle. "There's no use saying anything at all to him. I'll think up the right thing to do. Just let me be; I'll think up the right thing."
      "You think your situation is funny," said Sim, sitting beside Mr. Birtwhistle, "but so is mine. This letter begins with matters you don't care about. Here he say-- no, that's only some trifle-- "My dear boy, you must be careful and not let such good fortune turn your head. I hope you realize that now is the time for saving. I seem to gather from your letters that you are entering upon more expensive ways of living than I could ever afford.' I wish I had a cigarette," said Sim. Birt, we couldn't possibly afford five cents for cigarettes, could we? No, that's out of the question! 'But, as you say, it is probably necessary for you to keep up an appearance. You have shown such unexpected abilities'-- how's that, Mrs. Birtwhistle?-- 'that I, even with my greater age, feel as if it was presumptuous'-- some day he'll regret writing so respectfully to me----'to advise you, but do let me repeat that now is the time for saving. I never before realized the greatness of the opportunities for a young man to-day--'"
      "It's the rottenest insult ever offered us!" exclaimed Mrs. Birtwhistle. "The miserable old creature! May she never have a day's luck for it-- there goes Mrs. Maheffy up the stairs-- no, it's Mrs. Tunnan; she always goes up so briskly. No stopping at this door, is there? I guess not-- but perhaps they don't know."
      "Oh, out on the stoop I told Mrs. Maheffy, but we don't want anybody. I think it more decent to let us alone."
      "Go on, Sim."
      "Me? I don't want to see any more!" said Sim, crumpling the letter and throwing it at vacant-eyed Mr. Parker. "Or, here," recovering the letter and reading-- "'Whatever you do, my boy, always maintain the Rakes' standard of excellence!' I'm in a fix. He writes a pretty good hand, doesn't he? Asbury, you know you've got cigarettes hidden away somewhere."
      "I think it a disgrace, I do, indeed!" cried Mrs. Birtwhistle. "A man of your age and the business ability you say you've got, to be dispossessed for a few miserable dollars that we wouldn't throw to a dog-- she's a miserable, old scut, she is, with all the time we've been good tenants here-- shall I get some chopped meat, or will you have bread and cheese for supper?"
      "Get a can of lobster!" and "Broil a few quail for us," and "Isn't terrapin in season?"
      "I know what to do!" burst out Mr. Birtwhistle excitedly. "I've found out what to do. I must get the money and then I'll know what to do."
      "What?"
      "Why, pay the rent."
      "But you haven't the money," Mrs. Birtwhistle pointed out. "And we must lose our home. Can't you think of anything?"
      Mr. Birtwhistle could not.
      "Can't I depend on you? I feel I must depend on you. Can't you think of anything?"
      Mr. Birtwhistle shook his head forlornly.
      "You must think of something! You're a big strong man; surely you can do something for us. You can?"
      "I'm down and out!" said Mr. Birtwhistle miserably.
      "Then shall I get chopped meat? We have an onion for it. Or bread and cheese? Cheese? Shall I?"
      "Ten cents' worth of American cheese and a loaf of New England bread," said Mr. Birtwhistle decisively, and taking all the responsibility.
      Miss Guffy was crying. Miss Guffy was sobbing a little. "Sure, the two of yez, and the lot of yez, I can't but feel 'tis all my fault some way."
      "Guffy, what ever put that in your head?"
      "I can't but feel it; I can't, because 'tis like bad luck has marked me for its own, and where'er r go I do but bring bad luck with me. I wouldn't wish it for the world! For the world I wouldn't wish for to bring bad luck to youse."
      "Guffy that's silly talk!"
      "It may be," sighs, head drooping languidly to the higher shoulder, "for I am but a silly one, anyway." She hysterically added: "I was born to misfortune. Think of the misfortunes Stevie brought down on me, and that was only one case. For a year afterward I went down on my knees every morning--"
      "Oh, Guffy, don't pray curses down on anybody."
      "What? Don't what? I prayed the next meal would strangle him. I prayed every penny he took from me would be a curse to him; that, did he have childer of his own, they would turn agin' him in his old age; or they'd be overlooked in their infancy. Oh, you might as well be the biggest strumpet in New York. Worse than I got, and up so early, come rain or shine, to my hard day's work-- was I the biggest strumpet in New York, worse couldn't befall me."
      "Sure," head again drooping languidly, manner again listless, "one time I did think the tide had turned, when Joe comes home and paid me the twenty-eight dollars he owes me-- but no tide turns for Guffy. He then runs up thirty-six dollars on me. Every day 'twas can I lend him a dime; give him a quarter, then it might as well be a dollar, and he'll pay me all together; and, when I ask him about his work, be makes me answer that Hughes won't take him on yet.
      "'Hughes didn't take me on to-day,' is his answer. Hughes comes for him. 'I can't speak for him,' I says; 'he's in the front room; see him for yourself.' 'Do you want work to-day, Joe?' 'Oh,' rubbing down his legs and arms, 'I'm in no condition to start in to-day.' 'Then you'll not stay here to get into condition,' I tells him. 'Would vou put me out?' 'Yes, and this minute.' 'Then there's others goes with me.' That night four of them leaves."
      "You should have come to us," said Mrs. Birtwhistle.
      "Sure, girl, dear, you know I didn't know you even existed. But 'twas at that time Mr. Eagan had given me his sixty dollars to hold for him till the next day, when the bank would open. I have it in the bureau drawer. I'm alone in the kitchen, with Stevie and little Edie, the sister's childer, all of my own left to me, and Stevie grown up the fine big boy able to take care of himself and ease the strain on me. On the table I have the pails, all in a row, to send the supper over to the men in the gas house; two eggs, slices of ham, bread and butter, and a can of tea in each pail, and each pail with a ticket and the man's name on it. Thinks I to myself, I'll run out and get a bit of steak for ourselves, to throw on the coals. Stevie's not there when I comes back. I wonder at that, for 'tis him will bring the pails over to the gas house. I'm wondering, and I'm looking to see his overcoat gone from the nail on the door. I don't know what comes over me, but my hand goes to my heart; I'm running to the bureau drawer.
      "Mrs. Birtwhistle, I couldn't describe to you! The money was gone. I couldn't describe to you, because the next thing I knew, the men was throwing dippers of water over me. I'm running up to the police station, crying like mad, and I don't know what the people must of thought of me. A detective comes back with me. Sure, what good are they? The detective fools and fiddles around, expecting five or ten dollars for himself before he'd do anything.
      "Mr. Eagan comes home to his supper. I say, 'Mr. Eagan, you had a right to put your money in the bank.' What else I said I don't know, and never will know. I gave him twelve weeks' board, and 'twas that left me where I couldn't pay the butcher, nor the rent, and had to sell out for a few paltry dollars.
      "Oh, as sure as God, Mrs. Birtwhistle, bad luck has married me, and before my birth seen me coming. For three weeks Edie went barefoot, and comes crying to me telling me what the other childer said to her; and I having to pretend to the neighbors she would go barefoot, and there was no keeping the shoes and stockings on her, till I borried fifty cents from the woman on the second floor, and gets a second-hand pair for her."
      "You ought of come to us!" said Mrs. Birtwhistle severely.
      "Ah, sure, but you poor thing, I wish I'd known it!" said Katie.
      "Gee!" said Sim; "I don't see any such hard luck in going barefooted; I used to want to-- but couldn't, of course. Of course we had a certain position, socially, you know, in town, Birt. Excuse me, Miss Guffy."
      "Then she's down with the scarlet fever, when I thought I couldn't stand another thing. She lies here, like this, like a scarlet rag in my arms, with the deleriums, and no doctor, saying, 'What's that, auntie?' 'Hush, darling, there's nothing; you're only imagining.' 'No, auntie, there's something in the room, auntie.' 'Sure, sweetheart, what could harm you, and your auntie here by you?'
      "Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph! I'll go crazy! I've worked so hard, and if I'd been the biggest strumpet in New York I'd be rolling in wealth this day. I see the floors over the way is to be idle, too. Sure, how can they keep tenants there, and never a bit of repairing?
      "Oh!" sitting on the window sill, beating her knees, writhing from side to side, "it seems the harder you try, the worse voter luck is."
      "She's had a fierce time of it, Asbury," said Sim.
      "Has she?" asked Asbury.
      "Come here, sit beside me," said Mr. Birtwhistle.
      "Ah, yes, Mr. Birtwhistle, you and Mrs. Birtwhistle, the two of yez, is the only ones ever good to poor Guffy, that you took off of the streets when there wasn't a shoe to her foot, nor an extra shirt to her back. Thank God for that! There's been some one good to her--
      "Then I'll repay you! I'll run like mad up and down the streets of New York, shrieking what has befallen you, till I get the money for you. I'll call it out on the housetops that the grandest man in New York, and his wife, is in sore necessity. I'll see is there one kind heart, or one speck of Christian feeling in all this big city. Don't stop me. No, no, Mr. Rakes, let me go! If she has to go shrieking it in the streets and squares of New York, Guffy will pay a teeny mite of her debt to the two of yez. Don't stop me!" running to the hall door.
      "You'd better run after her, Birt," cried Mrs. Birtwhistle.
      "She's excited," said Sim. "I think she'd feel better to walk around the block a little."
      "If I ever seen such oddities!" exclaimed Emma.
      Said Katie: "I likes to see gratitude. And you certainly always was good to her, like me and Emma's said a hundred times. You was good to her, and I likes to see gratitude."
      "I think," said Mrs. Birtwhistle, "some one ought to go out after her. Shall I? Will you, Birt?"
      "Wait! Perhaps"-- cunning in Mr. Birtwhistle's eyes, even if cunning on his flat face was almost impossible-- "you can't tell what she might do. Excitement like that is valuable, Sim; it's energy and makes people do what they can't do other times. Perhaps she might find and interest some one who would help us.
      "I've fallen!" laughed Mr. Birtwhistle. "Would you ever dream me capable of saying such a thing as that, Sim? I've fallen!"
      "Don't you break down!" implored Mrs. Birtwhistle. "I don't know what will become of me if you break down. I so need you. Shall we think is there anywhere we can borry?"
      "Don't ask me. I've fallen."
      "No stamps to sell, of course? All letters sold?"
      "I've fallen!"
      "Birt, shall I get the bread and cheese, now?"
      "Ten cents worth of American cheese," said Mr. Birtwhistle promptly. "Get one loaf of New England bread."
      "All right, then," said Mrs. Birtwhistle, reviving. Sim was whispering-. "There's some one at the door."
      "I dassn't open it," said Mr. Birtwhistle. "I'm a coward."
      "Well, I'm no coward," whispered Sim, "but I hate to face anybody"-- seeming to struggle with himself. "Go on, open the door', Birt! What do you care?"-- struggling with himself, forcing himself. "What do I care?" said Sim, opening the door.
      "Aha, Mrs. Tunnan!" blithely from Birtwhistle. "How are you feeling to-day? You're looking fine and blooming as ever."

Next Chapter

Introduction

B.W. Dodge and Company (1909) edition:

Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Pearson's Magazine (American Edition) version:

Chapter 1 2 3 4 5

The Pearson's version can be resumed at chapter 9 of the Dodge edition.

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