"You mean the more ugly we make it the better."
"Just that. Let's end this one way or the other."
When Joe and I came into the library my father rose slowly from his chair and the two stood looking at one another. And by some curious mental process two memories flashed into my mind. One was of the towering sails that my father had told me he had seen on his first day on the harbor, when coming here a crude boy from the inland he had thrilled to the vision of owning such ships with crews to whom his word should be law, and of sending them over the ocean world. Such was the age he had lived in. The other was of the stokers down in the bottom of the ship, and Joe's tired frowning face as he said, "Yes, they look like a lot of bums--and they feed all the fires at sea." What was there in common between these two? To each age a harbor of its own.
"Well, young man, what have you to say to me?"
Sue came into the room. Briefly I explained to her what our father had agreed upon, that she was to do the deciding and that he would abide by her decision. Then I began my questions to Joe. I felt awkward, painfully the intruder into two other people's lives. And I felt as though I were operating upon the silent old man close by. "The uglier the better," I kept repeating to myself.
"Let's take up first the money side, Joe. Have you any regular salary?"
"Such as it is, where does it come from?"
"One week twenty dollars and another ten or five," he said. "One week I got three dollars and eighty-seven cents."
"But can two of you live on pay like that--say an average of ten dollars a week?"
"I know several millions of people that have to. And most of them have children too."
"No better," was his answer. My father turned to him slowly as though he had not heard just right.
"But as a matter of fact," I went on, "you wouldn't have to, would you? You'd expect Sue to earn money as well as yourself."
"I hope so--if she wants to--it's my idea of a woman's life."
"And the work you hope she'll enter will be the kind you believe in--organizing labor and taking an active part in strikes?"
"I see. And if you were out of a job at times you'd be willing to let her support you?"
Sue angrily half rose from her chair, but Joe with a grim move of his hand said softly, "Sit down and try to stand this. Let's get it over and done with." Then he turned quietly back to me.