Page:Firecrackers a realistic novel.pdf/63

 sation to a full stop by surprisingly closing a chapter or by introducing the character of Death. It's the same in life. Conversations are only interrupted; they are never concluded.

Paul paid no attention to the sense of this harangue. I want to know, he persisted, why you were working as a furnace-mender, and why you quit. The boss of the company told me he would be willing to pay you double. He said you were the most efficient workman he had ever engaged.

So you went around there to look me up! Gunnar's wonderment increased.

That's nothing. I have been looking you up ever so many places. I don't think I should have stopped looking for you until I discovered you. I was lucky, that's that. But it's all so queer. Today I find you engaged in another unlikely occupation, and I suppose tomorrow. . . Well, what are you going to do tomorrow? It's none of my business, perhaps, but. ..

Everything is everybody's business, O'Grady asserted solemnly, only you've got to make it your business and not mere vulgar curiosity in some one else's. Why, every woman should be interested when another woman bears a child, because she should feel impelled to learn how to do it herself in the most efficient way, but if a woman is only interested in childbirth in relation to the question as to whether the offspring is by-blow or legitimate,