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One reason he had wanted to mend boats there was that he might know some of the men who worked in the shops at the Arsenal, interested in that relation of labor to militarism. For two months Katie had heard nothing from him. In those first months he, too, seemed helpless before it, seemed to understand that Katie's feeling was a thing he could not hope to understand much less, change.
Behind the curtain of this casual conversation had been enacted a melodrama as intensely vital and elemental as any of Shakespeare's tragedies, for the day Dawkins had fired Katie O'Connell "for reasons," as she said and told her to go back where she came from or anywhere she liked for that matter, so long as she got out of her sight, Katie's brother Shane in the back room of McManus' gin palace gave Red McGurk for the same "reasons" a certain option and, the latter having scornfully declined to avail himself of it, had then and there put a bullet through his neck.
But suddenly all letters stopped, and the mother thought for long they must be coming to see her, but this hope and many another faded, and the fair morning of Katie's marriage was shrouded in impenetrable gloom and mystery. Archie got bravely over his trouble, and a while after his father's death married a good little woman, not quite without "the bit of siller."
Woodward's mind which she could not bring herself to tell to any doctor, but which still left in her breast an impression that she was perhaps keeping back the true cause of Katie's illness. Charley had not been at Hampton since his arrest, and it was manifest to all that Katie was therefore wretched.
So when these last words came, and brought what seemed to her like a direct appeal, she was deeply moved. "What say ye, me fair one?" repeated "His Majesty" with greater earnestness, trying to catch Katie's eye. Mrs. Russell's eyes were modestly bent downward on the floor. She clung to the royal hand. "Oh, sire!" she murmured. "Oh, Your Royal Majesty! I am thine yours forever I cannot refuse!"
"Katie," he cried, after more time had elapsed without finding either the astonishing stone or the astounding flower, "here's a little sunny path! I want you to walk in it." Laughingly he pushed her over into the narrow strip of sunshine, where there was just room for Katie's feet. But Katie shook her head. "What do I care about sunny paths, if I must walk them alone?"
She had learned this from her grandmother, whose first thought he had been for many a year and day, and Katie's many pretty ways of "doing good to grandfather" did quite as much good to grannie.
The girl's eyes roved all around like the furtive eyes of a frightened animal. But they came back to Katie's steadying gaze. "Why yes I'll come if you want me to," she said in voice she was clearly making supreme effort to steady. "I do indeed," said Kate simply and led the way into the house. And now that they were face to face across a tea-table Miss Jones was bunkered again.
It was not an exciting marriage; neither of them was very young or very much in love, at least Katie was not, but it was a good marriage of convenience, so to speak, and it might have lasted if it had not been, as we shall see, for Marie, and Katie's affection for her. When Marie started in on her career of wildness, Katie and Nick, her husband, had a little home together.
It was very difficult for Katie to confine herself to the statement of facts, for the reason that she seemed to imagine herself prosecutor, witness, judge, jury, and executioner all rolled into one. It took all the tact of the clerk to get from her what could be received as purely legal evidence. Katie's testimony would be nothing new to the reader.