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"They was th' wan girl left, Theresa, a big, clean-lookin' child that I see grow up fr'm hello to good avnin'. She thought on'y iv th' ol' man, an' he leaned on her as if she was a crutch. She was out to meet him in th' ev'nin'; an' in th' mornin' he, th' simple ol' man, 'd stop to blow a kiss at her an' wave his dinner-pail, lookin' up an' down th' r-road to see that no wan was watchin' him.
He looked as if he had come to stay. Isabel withdrew her hand from the persistent little fingers clinging to it. "Good-night, children," said she. "I guess I've got company. I must hurry in. Come bright and early to-morrow." The little group marched away, swathed in comforters, each child carrying the dinner-pail with an easy swing.
Troops of laborers straggled along the pavements, each with his dinner-pail in hand; and in many places the eternal building up and pulling down was already going on; carts were struggling up the slopes of vast cellars, with loads of distracting rubbish; here stood the half-demolished walls of a house, with a sad variety of wall-paper showing in the different rooms; there clinked the trowel upon the brick, yonder the hammer on the stone; overhead swung and threatened the marble block that the derrick was lifting to its place.
The stranger must have remembered Jimmie, for he laughed and exclaimed: "Ah, my friend with the dinner-pail! It's luck you haven't got it now, or I'd hold you up. I'm starving!" Jimmie smiled in sympathy. "It's early to be hungry," said Jimmie; "when did you have your breakfast?" "I didn't," laughed the young man. "I went out to walk up an appetite, and I lost myself.
The two laborers tossed down their hoes and moved to the same haven. "What time is hit, Bob?" Morgan looked at his watch. "Five past twelve, Pink. Working hard?" "Yep. Tol'able big crop." He sat down at the foot of a tree and opened his dinner-pail. "Have some?" he asked, pointing the opening at Bob, who was settling into repose with his hat over his face. "No, I thank you.
'Mollie 'll bring in th' coal, he says. 'An' as f'r you, Honoria, ye'd best see what there is in th' cupboord an' put it in ye'er dinner-pail, he says. 'I heerd th' first whistle blow a minyit ago, he says; 'an' there's a pile iv slag at th' mills that has to be wheeled off befure th' sup'rintindint comes around, he says.
He went down the shaft every morning with a load of miners and laborers, carrying his whip and his dinner-pail, and a lighted lamp fastened to the front of his cap. When he reached the bottom of the shaft he hurried to the inside plane, and up the slope to the stables to get his mule. The mule's name was Jasper.
In the town many cheeks blanch when those five long, ominous wails of the escaping steam cleave the air. A husband, a son, a father who has gone forth blithely in the morning, with his dinner-pail full, may be brought out of the wreck, mangled or dead. And until complete details are known there is a tremor in the whole community. Some hearts beat faster, others seem to stand still.
When the whistle blew she took down the dinner-pail, filled it with potatoes and the piece of pork hot from the boiling pot, poured the coffee in the tin cup, put on the cover, and, limping to the edge of the retaining-wall, lowered it over by a string to her father. Sanders looked up and waved his hand, and the girl went back to her post at the window.
Bluejackets have taken part in landing-parties, too, but it is not to black the bluejacket's eye to say that it is not his regular job. The bluejacket's work is aboard ship on the bridge, in magazines, in turrets, below decks. Advance shore work is the marine's specialty, and he goes to it pretty much as a man with a dinner-pail goes to work in the subway.
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