Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/209

 and a wife do not leave much change out of a pay-check even when it's padded by overtime; six kids and a wife with no pay-check is pretty stiff running.

Gilleen was too hot under the collar to give a thought to that when he marched out of the roundhouse that noon; but it wasn't many hours, after he had put in a few to make up for the sleep he hadn't had during the preceding weeks, that the problem was up to him for consideration with a vote for adjournment for once ruled out as not in order.

Mrs. Gilleen may or may not have shared her spouse's opinions on the subject of his illustrious descent—if she did she never put on any "airs" about it. Washing and dressing and cooking was about all one woman could manage for a household as big as hers. That's what she said anyway, whenever any one asked her about it. And one glance at the red-headed brood that filled the front yard and swung on the front gate, whose hinges creaked in loud and bitter protest, was enough to preclude any dispute on that score. Just a little bit of a woman she was physically; but bigger practically than the whole corps of leading lights in social and domestic economy—which, come to think of it, is damning Mrs. Gilleen with faint praise, whereas too much couldn't be said for her. However, let that go. Mrs. Gilleen was practical, and she had the matter up to the engineer almost before he had the sleep washed out of his eyes. No nagging, no reproach, nothing of that kind—Mrs. Gilleen wasn't that sort of a woman. "King," or not, Gilleen might have been, Katie Gilleen was a queen, not in looks perhaps, but a