Page:Frank Packard - On the Iron at Big Cloud.djvu/210

 queen—that's flat. A fine woman is the finest thing in the world, and if that were said a little more often than it is maybe things generally wouldn't be any the worse for it—which is not a plank in the platform of the Suffragettes, though it may sound like it.

"Michael," said she, "you rowed with Mr. Regan, and he fired you. Will he take you back?"

Gilleen lowered the towel to his chin to catch the dripping water from his hair—he had just buried his head in the washbowl the minute before—and looked at his wife.

"I wouldn't ask him, Kate," he said shortly.

Mrs. Gilleen was proud, too—but for all that she sighed.

"What will you do, then, Michael?" she asked.

"I dunno yet, little woman. Some of the others will give me a job, I guess. Mabbe I'll try the train crews. I'll hit 'em up for something, anyway."

"But there's ever so much less money in that"—Mrs. Gilleen's tones were judicial, not plaintive.

"I know it," returned Gilleen; "but it'll tide us over an' keep the steam up till we get a chance to pull out for somewheres where a man can get an engine without a grinning fool of a master mechanic to double-cross him with the worst of it every chance he gets."

"I hope it will all come out right," said Mrs. Gilleen, a little wistfully.

"It will," Gilleen assured her. "Don't you worry. I'll get after a job right away as soon as I've had a bite."

It came easier even than Gilleen had figured it