“And I’m obliged to say that you could offer a little to Quarry, just to keep his tongue sweet. He’s got a fearful gainin’ way with his mouth, and them nutt and bolt hands will pick up and listen to all he has to say. They’ve been in schools, and are crazy for talkin’ and politics. The kind of foolishness men gets from schools is the worst kind.” Jerry was angry. “Ain’t he been talkin’ on me, maybe?” Emma asked. “Perhaps so, perhaps no. He’s so mean you could buy him for a small price. He ain’t much of a luxury.” As they talked they heard the dinner pails clanking as some of the men came down the homeward hill. Then an oar car sided under the window close by the house. In it were the workmen of the nutt and bolt factory--Quarry in their midst, his face ardently conceited and his gestures highly alcoholic. Emma scanned him with a fierce contempt. “He wouldn’t be like that if he could stir around,” she exclaimed, pointing toward her own room door. Then she stood by Jarlsen’s bed to avoid Quarry, and as she looked at him he laughed; it was his old, mirthful, kindly laughter. It seemed to the girl, who cherished him, that he had brought pain to their house, and had also been spared its consequences. She suffered--he slept. VI. A BAD BARGAIN. “It is well to pay your debts, on the chance you’ll lose your money.” IN four days’ time Black received a letter from the paralysis specialist that delighted him. It consisted solely of questions regarding trains and Soot City conveyances and the distance from the station to the patient’s abiding place. To the genial undertaker intercourse with a man too busy to con a time-table was social promotion. He went at once to Emma, and in a mixed state of reverence and elation read her the physician’s curt note, with his own copious comment. “Sounds ’cute, don’t he?” said Black. “He knows I understand him. It must be a kind of comfort to him comin’ to a strange place to find a man of his own stamp who feels just his way about the game o’ life.” Putting his tongue in his cheek, he was soon lost in wonder to find himself, after long years of comparative obscurity, so very like this shining light of medical science. Emma almost said her thought aloud; it was well she did not, for she was saying inwardly, “You can always tell when Jerry Black’s been to the city, he has such an extra green look.” With Martha Long for aid, she prepared for the doctor joyfully. They washed everything just for the love of the unaccustomed, that seizes women under suspense. Everything had been washed for the wedding, and was still much cleaner than its ordinary state. There was one day when the house-cleaning was finished and the doctor not yet come; so Martha undertook a little rudimentary cooking, and Emma raked up the little space of yard and dug out the weeds from the beds of cinder-spotted marigolds.