human
I'm cut out for work. It's all right. That's my job, and I'm proud of it so far as that goes. I could get a place clerking if I wanted to, and be in the dancing crowd in six months, and be out to the Van Dorns for dinner in a year. He paused and looked into the distant valley and cried.
gpt
But I tell you--my job is down there. And I'm not going to quit them. God knows they're getting the rough end of it. If you knew, his voice raised slightly and a petulant indignation tempered it.
human
If you knew the gouging and pocket picking and meanness that is done by the people up town to the people down there in the smoke, you'd be one of those howling red-mouthed anarchists you read about.
gpt
For instance--what's just one thing?
human
Well, for instance--in the mines where I work all the men come up grimy and greasy and vile. They have to wash. In Europe we roughnecks know that wash-houses are provided by the company, but here, he cried excitedly,
gpt
He looked up at her savagely.
human
Oh, I know they're ignorant foreigners and little better than animals and those things don't hurt them--only if you had a little girl who had to be in and out of the single room of your home when the men came home to wash up--
gpt
Why, I was talking to a dago last night at the shaft mouth going down to work on the graveyard shift and he said that he came here believing he would find a free, beautiful country in which his children could grow up self-respecting men and women, and then he told me about his little girls living down there where all the vice is scattered through the tenements, and--about this washing up proposition, and now one of the girls is gone and they can't find her. He threw out a despairing hand;
human
So I'm a roughneck, Laura--I'm a jay, and I'm going to stay with them.
gpt
But your people, she urged.
human
What about them--your father and brothers?
gpt
Jap's climbing out. Father's too old to get in. And Kenyon-- he flinched,
human
I hope to God I'll have the nerve to stay when the test on him comes. He turned to the girl passionately:
gpt
But you--you--oh, you--I want you to know-- He did not finish the sentence, but rose and walked into the house and called:
human
Dad--Kenyon--come on, it's getting late. Stars are coming out.