Adelle felt that so far as her own case went, the man had come remarkably near the truth. The mason turned, with an afterthought. "And I'm not whinin' 'bout it neither, remember that! I can always earn enough to keep me goin' and get whiskey when I want it." He said it with a touch of pride, his workman's boast that he was beholden to no one for meat or drink. It was more than Archie could say now or at any time in his life. "Are you married?" Adelle asked, feeling that if there was a woman in the situation another line of argument might be used. "Married! Hell, no! What do I want of being married?" Married men, Adelle had heard, were likely to be steadier workers than the unmarried. Also more what her class called "moral." "I should think you would want to have your own home and children in it," she ventured. The mason gave her an ironical look full of meaning. "That would sure be nice, if I could always give 'em plenty to eat and education, the same as you can. But what can a man do with a wife when he's here to-day and off to the other end of the land to-morrow lookin' for a job? A steady job in one place where it's fit for a woman to live ain't to be found every day.... A workingman who marries, unless he's got money in the bank and a sure payin' job that'll last, is a fool or worse. What good is it to bring children into the world to be like him or maybe worse?" Adelle had no reply to this blunt logic. Marriage, he seemed to think, was one of the privileges of the rich class, which she was sure ought not to be so. "The trouble with the workingman, ma'am, is that he has done that too long,--got families that had to live the best they could, any old way, and take any old job they could get. That's what's made it easy goin' for you! But the workingman is learnin' a thing or two. Men like me won't get married, nor have children to slave for the rich." "What do the girls do?" Adelle asked, thinking of her own fate if she had been left in the Church Street rooming-house. The mason shrugged his shoulders and came out with another brutality. "Some of 'em go into the houses for your men to use--there's always that for 'em," he added, with a disagreeable laugh. "No, ma'am, I tell you until things are made more right in this world, it's better for a poor man to get along the best he can without draggin' a woman after him and a lot of helpless children." "I didn't know it was as bad as that," Adelle remarked helplessly. "I guess, ma'am, there are a good many things about life you don't know." "That's so," Adelle admitted honestly.