in long gulps down into his thin lungs. Eliza, recollective and hurt at what had been said, worked on.
“What are you trying to do with your kid, mama?” he said in a hard quiet voice, after a silence. “Do you want to make a tramp out of him?”
“What do you mean? What do you mean?”
“Do you think it’s right to send him out on the streets with every little thug in town?”
“Why, I don’t know what you’re talking about, boy,” she said impatiently. “It’s no disgrace for a boy to do a little honest work, and no one thinks so.”
“Oh, my God,” he said to the dark angel. “Listen to that!”
Eliza pursed her lips without speaking for a time.
“Pride goeth before a fall,” she said after a moment. “Pride goeth before a fall.”
“I can’t see that that makes much difference to us,” said he. “We’ve got no place to fall to.”
“I consider myself as good as any one,” she said, with dignity. “I hold my head up with any one I meet.”
“Oh, my God,” Ben said to his angel. “You don’t meet any one. I don’t notice any of your fine brothers or their wives coming to see you.”
This was true, and it hurt. She pursed her lips.
“No, mama,” he continued after a moment’s pause, “you and the Old Man have never given a damn what we’ve done so long as you thought you might save a nickel by it.”
“Why, I don’t know what you’re talking about, boy,” she answered. “You talk as if you thought we were Rich Folks. Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Oh, my God,” he laughed bitterly. “You and the Old Man like to make out you’re paupers, but you’ve a sock full of money.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said angrily.
“No,” he said, with his frequent negative beginning, after a moody silence, “there are people in this town without a fifth what we’ve got who get twice as much out of it. The rest of us have never had anything, but I don’t want to see the kid made into a little tramp.”
