He folded his newspaper.
"I guess she won't be coming now," he said, "so I might as well be turning in."
He got to his feet.
"The boys down at the Alliance tell me I’ll be making supervisor any day now, so I better get my sleep. It won't do for me to be showing up late to work."
Ellen sniffed contemptuously.
"If ye keep listenin' to them communists down at the Workers' Alliance, you'll be lucky even to hold your job with the WPA."
"They're in pretty good, you can't deny that.
It was them that got me onto full time instead of half time and you know it.
It's them that's for the working man."
"Communists are heathens," she said.
"Father Hadley told me they're against the church because they don't believe in God.
He says they're only playing up to the workin' man until they get in power, like in Russia.
Then they'll close the churches and make slaves out of us all."
"What if they are?" he asked.
"I don't see Father Hadley getting me a job or paying our bills.
No, it was the Alliance that put me to work and saw to it I earned enough to pay rent and buy food.
I don't care what Father Hadley calls them, as long as they do good for me."
She smiled bitterly.
"A fine family I have.
A husband who's a communist and a daughter who never has the time to come home."
"Maybe she's busy," Tom said lamely. "You know it's a responsible position she's got.
Didn't the sister at St. Mary's say, when she graduated, that she was very lucky to be working for such an important doctor?"
"Yes, but she still should come home once in a while.
I'm willin' to bet she hasn't been to Mass since she left St. Mary's."
"How do you know?" Tom asked angrily. "St. Paul's ain't the only church in San Francisco."
"I know," she said. "I feel it.
She doesn't want to come see us. She's makin' so much money now, she's ashamed of us."
"And what has she got to be proud of?
With you preaching religion at her all the time and the boys on the street still sniggering and laughing behind her back when she walks by?
Do you think that's something to make a young girl want to come home?"
Ellen ignored him.
"It's not right that a girl should stay away like this," she said stubbornly. "We both know what goes on up there on the hill, with everybody sleepin' with each other's wives and the drink.
I read the papers, too, ye know."
"Jennie's a good girl. She wouldn't do a thing like that."
"I'm not too sure.
Sometimes a taste of temptation is like a spoonful of honey. Just enough to sweeten your tongue but not enough to fill your whole mouth. And we both know she's tasted temptation."
"You still don't believe her, do you?" he asked bitterly. "You'd rather take the word of those two hoodlums than your own daughter."
"Then why didn't she go into court?
If there wasn't just a little truth in what they said, she wouldn't have been afraid.
But no, she takes the thousand dollars and lets herself be labeled a whore."
"You know as well as I why she didn't," Tom answered. "And you can thank your church for it.
They'd not even come into court to say she was a good girl.
No, they were afraid the boys' parents might not like it and cut off their weekly contributions."
"The church sent her to college. And they found her this job. They did their duty."
"Then what are you complaining about?"
She sat there quietly for a moment, listening to him drop his shoes angrily to the floor as he undressed in the bedroom.
Then she got out of the chair and felt the hot-water heater.
A hot bath would soothe her aches and pains a little; all this damp fall weather was bringing out her arthritis.
She took a match and kneeled down beside the heater.
Striking the match, she turned the pet cock. The flame caught for a moment, then died out in a tiny yellow circle.