"Married me! You make a good deal of that! Perhaps it would have been better if you had not married me. My child and I could have died together then. But I was _married_, and so I struggled. The child died, died, do you hear, because you had left me without money to get it what it needed. I sat and saw it die. You were--" She closed her lips as if to repress further words. As she reached the door, she said in her usual neutral tones: "So long as you are decent, keep from drinking, and don't get me into trouble at the school, you may stay and take what I can give you." "'May stay!'" Preston roared, getting to his feet and making a step to intercept her before she closed the door. His legs trembled, and he fell. She knelt over him to see if he had injured himself, and then satisfied that he was not hurt, she left the room, barring the door from the outside. She was none too soon in taking this precaution, for as she swung the heavy oak bar into its socket,--a convenient device of the old German, who had the reputation of being a miser,--she could hear Preston dragging himself toward the door, cursing as he stumbled over the furniture. She crept wearily downstairs into the bare room. Some one was moving in the tiny kitchen beyond. "Is that you, Anna?" Mrs. Preston called. "Ye-es," a slow voice responded. Presently a young woman came forward. She was large and very fair, with the pale complexion and intense blue eyes of the Swede. "I came in and found no one here, so I was cleaning up for you. I have time. John has gone to a meeting--there are many meetings now and not much work. You will eat something?" She went back to the kitchen and returned with warm food. "Yes, I am faint." Mrs. Preston's arms trembled. She laughed nervously as she spilled her tea. "You are not well? You cannot live so--it's no use," the strong Swede continued monotonously. "The men are bad enough when they are good; but when they are bad, a woman can do nothing." "Tell me about the strike." Anna Svenson laughed contemptuously, as if such affairs were a part of men's foolishness. "They're talking of going out, all the railroad men, if the roads use the Pullmans. That's what John has gone to see about. Work is hard to find, so they're going to make less of it." She stood easily, her arms by her side, watching Mrs. Preston eat, and talking in an even, unexcited tone. "Father likes the job I told you about--over at the lumber yards. He came in last Sunday. He says the folks out his way are near starving. Svenson thinks of quitting his job." She laughed gently. "Life is like that," Mrs. Preston assented. "You can't manage it." "No, why should one?" Anna Svenson replied coolly. "Children come, they die, they grow up, they fight, they starve, and they have children. It was so over there; it is so here--only more pay and more drink some days; less pay, less drink other days. I shall wash the dishes. Sit still."