Lavinia, as an opponent of union labor herself, could not answer this argument, though she felt it her duty to defend Marley. But before she could proceed in his defense, her father, strangely enraged at the mere mention of the policies of the unions, hurried on: "The union didn't show any consideration for him when it took his other job away from him." Lavinia shot a reproachful glance at her mother, who did not see it because she was shooting a glance more than reproachful at her husband, and it had the effect of silencing and humbling the judge, as all of Lavinia's arguments, or all of the arguments known to the propaganda of union labor, could not have done. CHAPTER XXVII A FOOTHOLD The next letter the postman gave Lavinia began ecstatically: "I've got a job at last! I'm now working for the C. C. and P. Railroad, in their local freight office, and I'm not trucking freight either, but I'm a clerk--a bill clerk, to be more exact. My duties consist in sitting at a desk and writing out freight bills, for which by some inscrutable design of Providence my study of common carriers and contracts in the law was doubtless intended to prepare me. "To-day I wrote out a bill for freight to Cook and Jennings, Macochee, Ohio, and you can imagine my sensations. It made me homesick for a while; I wished that by some necromancy I might conceal myself in the bill and go to Macochee with it; I had a notion to write a little word of greeting on the bill, but I didn't; it might have worried old man Cook's brain and he couldn't stand much of a strain of that kind. But I'm getting nearer Macochee every day now. I guess I'm to be a railroad man after all, and some day you'll be proud to tell your friends that I started at the bottom. 'Oh, yes,' you'll be boasting, 'Mr. Marley began as a common freight trucker; and worked his way up to general manager.' Then we'll go back to Macochee in my private car. I can see it standing down by the depot, on the side track close to Market Street, baking in the hot sun, and the little boys from across the tracks will be crowding about it, gaping at the white-jacketed darky who'll be getting the dinner ready. We'll have Jack and Mayme down to dine with us, and your father and mother and Chad and Connie, and my folks, too, and maybe, if you'll let me, Wade Powell. Then, of course, the Macochee people will think better of me; they won't be saying that I'm no good, but instead they'll stand around, in an easy, careless way, and say, 'Oh, yes, I knew Glenn when he was a boy. I always said he'd get up in the world.' "But, ah me, just now I'm a bill clerk at fifty dollars a month, thank you, and glad of the chance to get it; so is my voluptuous landlady glad; she'll get her board money a little more regularly now.