Then, with a sudden change of front, she encouraged Jonah's intimacy with
Ada. She invited him to the house, which he avoided with an animal craft
and suspicion, meeting Ada in the streets. It was her scheme to get him
to live in the house; the rest, she thought, would be easy. But Jonah
feared dimly that if he ventured inside the house he would bring himself
under the law. So he grinned, and kept his distance, like an animal
that fears a trap.

But at last, his resistance worn to a thread by constant coaxing, he had
agreed to spend the night there on account of the fowls. He was
interested in these, for one pair was his gift to Ada, the fruit of some
midnight raid.

Jonah stood alone at the corner watching the crowd. Chook's reference
to the baby had shaken his resolution, and he decided to think it over.
And as he watched the moving procession with the pleasure of a spectator
at the play, he thought uneasily of women and marriage. As he nodded from
time to time to an acquaintance, a young man passed him carrying a child
in his arms. His wife, a slip of a girl, loaded with bundles, gave Jonah
a quick look of fear and scorn. The man stared Jonah full in the face
without a sign of recognition, and bent his head over the child with a
caressing movement. Jonah noted the look of humble pride in his eyes,
and marvelled. Twelve months ago he was Jonah's rival in the Push,
famous for his strength and audacity, and now butter wouldn't melt in his
mouth. Jonah called to mind other cases, with a sudden fear in his heart
at this mysterious ceremony before a parson that affected men like a
disease, robbing them of all a man desired, and leaving them contented and
happy. He turned into Cardigan Street with the air of a man who is
putting his neck in the noose, resolving secretly to cut and run at the
least hint of danger.