Part 11 (1/2)

The secretary looked with hardly-concealed admiration at Tom, still splendid in the dying glow of his defiant wrath. ”If I objected, I'd deserve to be fired,” she said. Then she added, smiling: ”You may say it again if you like.”

After Miss Arnold had gone out Mr. Driscoll looked at Tom with blinking eyes. ”I suppose you think you're some sort of a hero,” he growled.

Tom's sudden confusion had collapsed his indignation. ”No, I'm a man looking for a job,” he returned, with a faint smile.

”Well, I'm glad you didn't take the job I offered you. I can't afford to let fools help manage my business.”

Tom took his hat. ”I suppose this is all,” he said and started for the door.

”Hold on!” Mr. Driscoll stood up. ”Why don't you shake hands with a man, like a gentleman? There. That's the stuff. I want to say to you, Keating, that I think you're just about all right. If ever you want a job with me, just come around and say so and I'll give you one if I have to fire myself to make a place for you. And if your money gives out, or you need some to use in your fight, why I ain't throwing much away these days, but you can get all you want by asking for it.”

Chapter VII

GETTING THE MEN IN LINE

His dismissal had been one of the risks Tom had accepted when he had decided upon war, and though he felt it keenly now that it had come, yet its chief effect was to intensify his resolution to overturn Buck Foley.

He strode on block after block, with his long, powerful steps, his resolution gripping him fiercer and fiercer,--till the thought leaped into his mind: ”I've got to tell Maggie.”

He stopped as though a cold hand had been laid against his heart; then walked on more slowly, considering how he should give the news to her.

His first thought was to say nothing of his dismissal for a few days. By then he might have found another job, and the telling that he had lost one would be an easy matter. But his second thought was that she would doubtless learn the news from some of her friends, and would use her tongue all the more freely because of his attempt at concealment; and, furthermore, he would be in the somewhat inglorious position of the man who has been found out. He decided to have done with it at once.

When he entered his flat Maggie looked up in surprise from the tidy on which she was working. ”What! home already!” Then she noticed his face.

”Why, what's the matter?”

Tom drew off his overcoat and threw it upon the couch. ”I've been fired.”

She looked at him in astonishment. ”Fired!”

”Yes.” He sat down, determined to get through with the scene as quickly as possible.

For the better part of a minute she could not speak. ”Fired? What for?”

she articulated.

”It's Foley's work. He ordered Driscoll to.”

”You've been talking about Foley some more, then?”

”I have.”

Tom saw what he had feared, a hard, accusing look spread itself over her face. ”And you've done that, Tom Keating, after what I, your wife, said to you only last week? I told you what would happen. I told you Foley would make us suffer. I told you not to talk again, and you've gone and done it!” The words came out slowly, sharply, as though it were her desire to thrust them into him one by one.

Tom began to harden, as she had hardened. But at least he would give her the chance to understand him. ”You know what Foley's like. You know some of the things he's done. Well, I've made up my mind that we oughtn't to stand him any longer. I'm going to do what I can to drive him out of the union.”

”And you've been talking this?” she cut in. ”Oh, of course you have! No wonder he got you fired! Oh, my G.o.d! I see it all. And you, you never thought once of your wife or your child!”

”I did, and you'll see when I tell you all,” Tom said harshly. ”But would you have me stand for all the dirty things he does?”