And Emma cursed her--a great, ignorant, insolent, heartfelt curse--because she thought these things could console her; things the Misses Bentley would never offer each other if their men had the blast. But Miss Bentley was one more of those devout women, not a few, who, because of a congenital shyness, can not do a kindness kindly. Emma would have given thanks for the same things given another way. The foremen also brought their wives, worthy women with sleek children, who consumed many pretzels with a brisk crunching that annoyed Emma greatly. She wanted people to be sad and unable to eat; to be upset with the trouble that had faded out her future with one too vivid moment of pain. Quarry sat at a table that was covered with a white cloth. Upon this lay a Bible and a bound time-table. The fitness of this was in the binding, which was ecclesiastically purple. The table was flanked by the Polacks, looking wretched, as if they had wept all night and grieved since morning on empty stomachs. They tuned their fiddles with writhing faces, and played the “Land o’ the Leal,” as the remaining space in Emma’s kitchen was being filled with the less shy among the labourers. The others stood at the open windows where the sunlight should have been. Jeremy Black offered prayer, shyly enough, for the Methodist minister was attending as a layman. He prayed for this and that, rather inconsequently, and with a red face; but Emma liked it better than anything else in the service. It was like her own prayer of last night: “O Lord, thou knowest what I want and what I don’t want. Please don’t send me what I don’t want. Good-night.” Even to God Emma could not name Jarlsen’s death. Her father came in at the climax of Jerry’s petition. He shook his head at Jarlsen’s big, quiet shape on the table, and announced in a voice that shook with emotion that “young men would be young men.” No one but Emma was galled with this needlessly irrelevant statement. In the less book-learned phases of life many people use expressions just because they admire them, not because they express their feeling, their fancy, or a fact. It is no more to be wondered at than the prayers they make, which would read like telegraphic messages in a High Church congregation. After his prayer Jerry sang. It is confessed that he sang less for art than for audience. He loved to sing. His voice was thin and rather sweet; his intonation very sure and happy. He contrived to infuse a wistfulness into the most martial or condemnatory ballads, types of song he particularly affected. There is always a good deal of preface to singing like his, and he was not above throat-clearing and loud swallowing. The verse he sang had been used at blast rites since the Swedes came first to Soot City. Its refrain was sung softly by every one to an accompaniment of rocking bodies: “Don’t fret, old wife, nor cry, For God won’t pass you by; He may come late, but if you wait, You’ll get behind the sky.”