grim, capable attention. It was the same kind of attention she
would have given a piece of machinery whose oiling and running
had been entrusted to her care. She hated it, and didn't
hesitate to say so.

Jo took to prowling about department-store basements, and
household goods sections. He was always sending home a bargain
in a ham, or a sack of potatoes, or fifty pounds of sugar, or a
window clamp, or a new kind of paring knife. He was forever
doing odd jobs that the janitor should have done. It was the
domestic in him claiming its own.

Then, one night, Carrie came home with a dull glow in her
leathery cheeks, and her eyes alight with resolve. They had what
she called a plain talk.

"Listen, Jo. They've offered me the job of first assistant
resident worker. And I'm going to take it. Take it! I know
fifty other girls who'd give their ears for it. I go in next
month."

They were at dinner. Jo looked up from his plate, dully. Then
he glanced around the little dining room, with its ugly tan walls
and its heavy, dark furniture (the Calumet Avenue pieces fitted
cumbersomely into the five-room flat).

"Away? Away from here, you mean--to live?"

Carrie laid down her fork. "Well, really, Jo! After all that
explanation."