Broken to the Plow | Page 4

with Mrs. Hilmer these
same words came to mind.
Hilmer disturbed him. He was a huge man with a rather well-chiseled
face, considering his thickness of limb, and his blond hair fell in an
untidy shower about his prominent and throbbing temples. Fred felt
him to be a man without any inherited social graces, yet he contrived to
appear at ease. Was it because he was disposed to let the women chatter?
No, that could not account for his acquired suavity, for silence is very

often much more awkward than even clumsy attempts at speech.
As the dinner progressed, Fred Starratt began to wonder just what had
tempted Helen to arrange this little dinner party for the Hilmers. When
she had broached the matter, her words had scarcely conveyed their
type. A woman who had helped his wife out at the Red Cross Center
during the influenza epidemic could be of almost any pattern. But
immediately he had gauged her as one of his wife's own kind. Helen
and her women friends were not incompetent housewives, but their
efforts leaned rather to an escape from domestic drudgery than to a
patient yielding to its yoke. If they discussed housekeeping at all, it was
with reference to some new labor-saving device flashing across the
culinary horizon. But Mrs. Hilmer's conversation thrilled with the pride
of her gastronomic achievements without any reference to the labor
involved. She invested her estate as housekeeper for her husband with a
commendable dignity. It appeared that she took an enormous amount of
pains with the simplest dishes. It was incredible, for instance, how
much thought and care and time went into a custard which she
described at great length for Helen's benefit.
"But that takes hours and hours!" Helen protested.
"But it's a real custard," Hilmer put in, dryly.
Fred Starratt felt himself flushing. Hilmer's scant speech had the
double-edged quality of most short weapons. Could it be that his guest
was sneering by implication at the fare that Helen had provided? No,
that was hardly it, because Helen had provided good fare, even if she
had prepared most of it vicariously. Hilmer's covert disdain was more
impersonal, yet it remained every whit as irritating, for all that. Perhaps
a bit more so, since Fred Starratt found it hard to put a finger on its
precise quality. He had another taste of it later when the inevitable
strike gossip intruded itself. It was Helen who opened up, repeating her
verbal passage with the butcher.
"They want eight hours a day and forty-five dollars a week," she
finished. "I call that ridiculous!"

"Why?" asked Hilmer, abruptly.
"For a butcher?" Helen countered, with pained incredulity.
"How long does your husband work?" Hilmer went on, calmly.
"I'm sure I don't know. How long do you work, Fred?"
Starratt hesitated. "Let me see ... nine to twelve is three hours ... one to
five is four hours--seven in all."
Hilmer smiled with cryptic irritation. "There you have it!... What's
wrong with a butcher wanting eight hours?"
Helen shrugged. "Well, a butcher doesn't have to use his brains very
much!" she threw out, triumphantly.
"And your husband does. I see!"
Starratt winced. He felt his wife's eye turned expectantly upon him.
"Seven hours is a normal day's work," he put in, deciding to ignore
Hilmer's insolence, "but as an employer of an office force you must
know how much overtime the average clerk puts in. We're not afraid to
work a little bit more than we're paid for. We're thinking of something
else besides money."
Hilmer buttered a roll. "What, for instance?"
"Why, the firm's interest ... our own advancement, of course ... the
enlarged capacity that comes with greater skill and knowledge." He
leaned back in his seat with a self-satisfied smile.
Hilmer laid down his butter knife very deliberately. "That's very well
put," he said; "very well put, indeed! And would you mind telling me
just what your duties are in the office where you work?"
"I'm in the insurance business ... fire. We have a general agency here
for the Pacific coast. That means that all the subagents in the smaller
towns report the risks they have insured to us. I'm what they call a map

clerk. I enter the details of every risk on bound maps of the larger
towns which every insurance company is provided with. In this way we
know just how much we have at risk in any building, block, or section
of any city. And we are able to keep our liability within proper limits."
"You do this same thing ... for seven hours every day ... not to speak of
overtime?"
"Yes."
"And how long have you been doing this?"
"About five years."
"And how long will you continue to do it?"
"God knows!"
Hilmer