“Work? That's all it is. Poetry is all work and no pay. You should have seen that gink sweatin' over the fool stuff. He'd work a week for five dollars' worth of foolishness. And besides, as soon as he married me he lost his job.” “Poetry?” Adna mumbled. “Advertising.” “Oh!” “Well, we didn't live together very long, and I was perfectly miser'ble every minute.” “You poor little honey child!” said Mrs. Thropp, who felt her lamb coming back to her, and even Adna reached over and squeezed her hand and rubbed her knuckles with his rough thumb uncomfortably. But it was good to have allies, and Kedzie went on: “By an' by Gilfoyle got the offer of a position in Chicago, and he couldn't get there without borrowing all I had. But I was glad enough to pay it to him. I'd 'a' paid his fare to the moon if he'd 'a' gone there. Then I got a position with a moving-picture company--as a jobber--I began very humbly at first, you see, and I underwent great hardships.” (She was quoting now from one of her favorite interviews.) “My talent attracted the attention of the director, Mr. Ferriday. He stands very high in the p'fession, but he's very conceited--very! He thought he owned me because he was the first one I let direct me. He wanted me to marry him.” “Did you?” said Adna, who was prepared for anything. “I should say not!” said Kedzie. “How could I, with a husband in Chicago? He wasn't much of a husband--just enough to keep me from marrying a real man. For one day, who should come to the studio but Jim Dyckman!” “Any relation to the big Dyckmans?” said Adna. “He's the son of the biggest one of them all,” said Kedzie. “And you know him?” “Do I know him? Doesn't he want to marry me? Isn't that the whole trouble? He's coming here this evening.” To Adna, the humble railroad claim-agent, the careless tossing off of the great railroad name of Dyckman was what it would have been to a rural parson to hear Kedzie remark: “I'm giving a little dinner to-night to my friends Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Mr. Apostle Paul.” When the shaken wits of the parents began to return to a partial calm they remembered that Kedzie had mentioned somebody named Gilfoyle--_Gargoyle_ would have been a better name for him, since he grinned down in mockery upon a cathedral of hope. Adna whispered, “When did you divorce--the other feller?” “I didn't; that's the trouble.” “Why don't you?” “I can't find him.” Adna spoke up: “I'll go to Chicago and find him and get a divorce, if I have to pound it out of him. You say he's a poet?” Adna had the theory that poetry went with tatting and china-painting as an athletic exercise. Kedzie had no reason to think differently. She had whipped her own poet, scratched him and driven him away in disorder. She told her people of this and of her inability to recall him, and of his failure to answer the letter she had sent to Chicago.