"My husband would have me come," she said. "And I couldn't leave my little girl, so I had to bring her along." And she stopped abruptly with a look that asked us plainly, "Now that I'm here, what do you want?"
"How old is your little girl?" Eleanore inquired.
"Are you going to put her in school in New York?"
And in spite of short suspicious replies she soon had Mrs. Marsh and her child talking of kindergartens and parks and other parts of the town they must see. Sue was now eagerly talking to Marsh, Joe was beside her helping her out, and both seemed wholly to have forgotten the disturbing woman behind them. But by the quick looks that Eleanore gave them now and then, I could see she was only holding back until she should have Mrs. Marsh in a mood where she could be brought into the talk and made to tell about her life.
"Don't you ever want to settle down?" she asked when there had come a pause. Marsh turned abruptly to Eleanore.
"Of course she does," he answered. "Did you ever know a woman who didn't, the minute that she got a kid? But my wife can't, if she sticks to me. She has had to make up her mind to live in any old place that comes along, from a dollar room in a cheap hotel to a shanty in a mining camp." And his look at Eleanore seemed to add, "That's the kind she is, you little doll."
Eleanore quickly made herself look as much like a doll as possible. She placidly folded her dainty gloved hands.
"I should think," she murmured in ladylike tones, "Mrs. Marsh would find that rather difficult."
"She does," said Marsh aggressively. "But my wife has nerve enough to stand up to the rough side of life--as the wives of most workingmen have to--in this rich and glorious land."
"Won't you tell us about it?" asked Eleanore sweetly. "I should be so interested to hear. It's so different, you see, from all I've been accustomed to."
"Yes," Marsh answered grimly, "I've no doubt it is. Go ahead, Sally, and tell them about it."
And Sally did. Gladly taking her husband's aggressive tone, she started out almost with a sneer. Her remarks at first were disjointed and brief, but I told her I was writing the story of her husband's life, that I wanted her side of it from the start. I promised to show her what I wrote and let her cut anything she had told me if she did not want it in print. And so in scattered incidents, with bits thrown in now and then by Marsh, the lives of these two began to come out. And we understood her bitterness.