“Put it down, that’s all. No scab’s going to handle that trunk. You
ought to be ashamed of yourself, you big coward, scabbing on honest men.
Why don’t you join the union and be a man?”
Mary Condon’s colour had left her face, and it was apparent that she was
in a rage.
“To think of a big man like you turning traitor to his class. I suppose
you’re aching to join the militia for a chance to shoot down union
drivers the next strike. You may belong to the militia already, for that
matter. You’re the sort—”
“Hold on, now, that’s too much!” Bill dropped the trunk to the floor
with a bang, straightened up, and thrust his hand into his inside coat
pocket. “I told you I was only kiddin’. There, look at that.”
It was a union card properly enough.
“All right, take it along,” Mary Condon said. “And the next time don’t
kid.”
Her face relaxed as she noticed the ease with which he got the big trunk
to his shoulder, and her eyes glowed as they glanced over the graceful
massiveness of the man. But Bill did not see that. He was too busy with
the trunk.
The next time he saw Mary Condon was during the Laundry Strike. The
Laundry Workers, but recently organized, were green at the business, and
had petitioned Mary Condon to engineer the strike. Freddie Drummond had
had an inkling of what was coming, and had sent Bill Totts to join the
union and investigate. Bill’s job was in the wash-room, and the men had
been called out first, that morning, in order to stiffen the courage of
the girls; and Bill chanced to be near the door to the mangle-room when
Mary Condon started to enter. The superintendent, who was both large and
stout, barred her way. He wasn’t going to have his girls called out, and
he’d teach her a lesson to mind her own business. And as Mary tried to
squeeze past him he thrust her back with a fat hand on her shoulder. She
glanced around and saw Bill.
“Here you, Mr. Totts,” she called. “Lend a hand. I want to get in.”
Bill experienced a startle of warm surprise. She had remembered his name
from his union card. The next moment the superintendent had been plucked
from the doorway raving about rights under the law, and the girls were
deserting their machines. During the rest of that short and successful
strike, Bill constituted himself Mary Condon’s henchman and messenger,
and when it was over returned to the University to be Freddie Drummond
and to wonder what Bill Totts could see in such a woman.
Freddie Drummond was entirely safe, but Bill had fallen in love. There
was no getting away from the fact of it, and it was this fact that had
given Freddie Drummond his warning. Well, he had done his work, and his
adventures could cease. There was no need for him to cross the Slot
again. All but the last three chapters of his latest, _Labour Tactics
and Strategy_, was finished, and he had sufficient material on hand
adequately to supply those chapters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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