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Updated: June 3, 2025
Jurgis was so grateful that he paid the half dollar the lawyer asked without winking an eyelash, and then rushed home to tell the news to the family. He found Ona in a faint and the babies screaming, and the whole house in an uproar for it had been believed by all that he had gone to murder the agent.
It seemed as if the respite had been too short they had not had time enough to get ready for it; but still it came, inexorably, and the hunted look began to come back into the eyes of little Stanislovas. The prospect struck fear to the heart of Jurgis also, for he knew that Ona was not fit to face the cold and the snowdrifts this year.
As he opened the door, he saw Elzbieta, who had also been looking for Ona, and had come home again. She was now on tiptoe, and had a finger on her lips. Jurgis waited until she was close to him. "Don't make any noise," she whispered, hurriedly. "What's the matter'?" he asked. "Ona is asleep," she panted. "She's been very ill. I'm afraid her mind's been wandering, Jurgis.
"She has been trying to get other work," the boy went on; "but she's so weak she can't keep up. And my boss would not take me back, either Ona says he knows Connor, and that's the reason; they've all got a grudge against us now. So I've got to go downtown and sell papers with the rest of the boys and Kotrina " "Kotrina!" "Yes, she's been selling papers, too. She does best, because she's a girl.
Ona saw this, and was very careful not to destroy his peace of mind, by letting him know how very much pain she was suffering. It was now the time of the spring rains, and Ona had often to ride to her work, in spite of the expense; she was getting paler every day, and sometimes, in spite of her good resolutions, it pained her that Jurgis did not notice it.
Even half a year of the sausage machines and the fertilizer mill had not been able to kill the thought of Christmas in them; there was a choking in Jurgis' throat as he recalled that the very night Ona had not come home Teta Elzbieta had taken him aside and shown him an old valentine that she had picked up in a paper store for three cents dingy and shopworn, but with bright colors, and figures of angels and doves.
Even the tricks and cruelties he saw at Durham's had little meaning for him just then, save as they might happen to affect his future with Ona. The marriage would have been at once, if they had had their way; but this would mean that they would have to do without any wedding feast, and when they suggested this they came into conflict with the old people.
Was it not unhealthful? the stranger would ask, and the residents would answer, "Perhaps; but there is no telling." A little way farther on, and Jurgis and Ona, staring open-eyed and wondering, came to the place where this "made" ground was in process of making. Here was a great hole, perhaps two city blocks square, and with long files of garbage wagons creeping into it.
I don't expect to get beyond these, but it is wonderful how much one can express with them.... "The natives have got names for us all. Louis was at first 'the old man, much to his distress; but now they call him 'Ona' meaning owner of the yacht, a name he greatly prefers to the first.
It seemed as if he had taken all of his mother's strength had left nothing for those that might come after him. Ona was with child again now, and it was a dreadful thing to contemplate; even Jurgis, dumb and despairing as he was, could not but understand that yet other agonies were on the way, and shudder at the thought of them. For Ona was visibly going to pieces.
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