"You did!" Jake retorted with vigor. "Usedn't you to keep me awake praying for her--hollerin' at God to forgive her? Didn't you, or did you?" No answer. "And you think this is her!" The ridiculousness of the fantasy smote him. "Say, you must 'a' went plumb nutty! Bendin' over that tub must 'a' gave you a rush of brains to the head." He laughed uproariously till she wanted to kill him. She tried to take back what she had said: "Don't you set there tellin' me I ever told you nothin' mean about my pore little sister. She was as good a girl as ever lived, Mamise was." "You're changin' your tune now, ain'tcha? Because you think she looks like a grand dam in pants! And where dya get that Mamise stuff? What was her honestogawd name? Maryer? You're tryin' to swell her up a little, huh?" "No, I ain't. She was named Marie Louise after her gran'-maw, on'y as a baby she couldn't say it right. She said 'Mamise.' That's what she called her poor little self--Mamise. Seems like I can see her now, settin' on the floor like Sister. And where is she now? O Gawd! whatever become of her, runnin' off thataway--a little sixteen-year-ol' chile, runnin' off with a cheap thattical troupe, because her aunt smacked her. "She never had no maw and no bringin' up, and she was so pirty. She had all the beauty of the fambly, folks all said." "And that ain't no lie," said Jake, with characteristic gallantry. "There's nothin' but monopoly everywheres in the world. She got all the looks and I got you. I wonder who got her!" Jake sighed as he studied the paper, ransacked it noisily for an article about her, but, finding none, looked at the date and growled: "Aw, this paper's nearly a year old--May, 1916, it says." This quelled his curiosity a little, and he turned to his dinner, flinging it into his jaws like a stoker. His wife went slip-slopping from stove to table, ministering to him. Jake Nuddle did not look so dangerous as he was. He was like an old tomato-can that an anarchist has filled with dynamite and provided with a trigger for the destruction of whosoever disturbs it. Explosives are useful in place. But Jake was of the sort that blow up regardless of the occasion. His dynamite was discontent. He hated everybody who was richer or better paid, better clothed, better spoken of than he was. Yet he had nothing in him of that constructive envy which is called emulation and leads to progress, to days of toil, nights of thought. His idea of equality was not to climb to the peak, but to drag the climbers down. Prating always of the sufferings of the poor, he did nothing to soothe them or remove them. His only contribution to the improvement of wages was to call a strike and get none at all. His contribution to the war against oppressive capital was to denounce all successful men as brutes and tyrants, lumping the benefactors with the malefactors.