to get out of it a better understanding of the relations between the two great English-speaking nations.”
“The two great English-speaking nations!” Fried answered harshly with a jeering laugh. “Jesus! That’s a good one! What two English-speaking nations do you mean?” he went on belligerently. “England and what other country?” he demanded. “You don’t think we speak the same language as they do, do you? Christ! The first year I was here they might have been talkin’Siamese so far as I was concerned! It wasn’t any language that I’d evah hoid before…. Yeah, I know,” he went on wearily in a moment, “they fed me all that bunk, too, before I came over…. English-speakin’nations!… Goin’back to your old home! our old home! For Christ’s sake!” he said bitterly. “Christ! It never was a home to me! I’d have felt more at home if they had sent me to Siberia!… Home! The rest of you guys can make believe it’s home if you want to!… I know what you’ll do,” he muttered. “You’ll stick it out and hate it like the rest of them…. Then you’ll go back home an’high-hat everyone and tell them all how wonderful it was, and what a fine time you had when you were here, and how you hated to leave it!… Not for me! I’m goin’home where I can see someone that I know some time who’s not too good to talk to me… and talk to someone who understands what I’m tryin’to say once in a while… and pay my little nickel for the big ride in the subway… and listen to the kids playin’in the street… an’go to sleep wit’the old elevated bangin’in my ears!… That’s home!” he cried. “That’s home enough for me.”
“A hell of a home,” said someone quietly.
“Don’t I know it!” snarled the man. “But it’s the only home I got! It’s better than no home at all!”
And for a moment he smoked darkly, bitterly, in silence.
“Nah! To hell wit’it!” he muttered. “To hell wit’it! I’ll be glad when it’s all over! I’m sorry that I ever came!”
And he was silent then, and the others looked at him, and had no more to say, and were silent.
LXXII
There were four in the Coulson family: the father, a man of fifty years, the mother, somewhere in the middle forties, a son, and a daughter, Edith, a girl of twenty-two who lived in the house with her parents. Eugene never met the son: he had completed his course at Oxford a year or
