In the late afternoon light, Katytown looked to me beautiful: the weather-beaten station, the empty platform, the long, dusty main street, which informally became the country road without much change of habit. Lena and I took what Katytown called "the rig," and drove out to Luke's father's farm.

We went into the kitchen, and Luke's mother, helpless now in her chair, broke out at us shrilly: "Well, and about time, you good-for-nothing high-fly!" she welcomed her daughter-in-law.

Luke, eating his supper, shuffled up from the table and came toward her. Lena amazed me. She went to him and kissed him, not with a manner of apology, but of abstraction. Then she opened her suit-case. "Look, Luke," she said. "Look, Mother," and hardly heard the mother's talk, flowing on. Luke's mother watched her, lowering. Luke commented awkwardly, and went off to the barn. Lena turned to the sink, filled with unwashed dishes. The clatter of these, of faultfinding, the murk of steam received her. But she moved among these with a new dignity. It seemed as if life would have let Lena be so much, if only somebody had understood in time.

I left her, and walked toward my own home. But for that morning in Twiney's pasture, six years ago, I should be back there now, in Lena's place. For me, somebody had understood in time. Before I knew it, I had broken into swift running along the country road. I must somehow make everybody understand in time.

The house lay quiet in the dreaming sunshine. I stepped to the open kitchen door. They were at supper. My mother pushed back her chair and came running to the door.

"Cossy!" she cried. "Oh, Cossy! I mean Cosma."

"You call me whatever you want to," I said, and kissed her.

Bert and Henny came roaring out at me. They filled the kitchen with their bodies and voices. Father kissed me. They sat with me, while Mother brought me some supper.

"Flossy dress, sis," Henny offered easily. "Day after to-morrow," he said, when I asked him when he was going back to his work. "We've got a committee to meet with a committee of the traction folks. We may be hot in it in another week." And when I asked, in what, he added: "Oh, we've got some fines and dockings and cuts in wages to fix up, and they're trying to make us pay more for our dynamite—you wouldn't understand."

I turned and looked at my brothers. For some reason, never until that moment had it occurred to me to count them in with those of us who were dreaming new dreams for labor. They had been simply my brothers, ugly, irritable, teasing. But they were laborers with whom, as strangers, I could make common cause. Bert's great figure and dead eyes and brutalized mouth were the figure and eyes and mouth of "The Puddler," which I had lately gone to an art gallery to see!

"I tell you," Father said, "there's new times coming for you fellows, or I miss my guess. I say it every day when I read the papers."

So then we talked, Father and Henry and Bert and I. For the first time in our years together, we spoke of these matters and listened to one another. This was talk such as would have been impossible while I stayed there, either idle or drudging. Now I was a person, and we could exchange impressions. It came to me what family meetings might be, if each one were engaged in some happy, chosen toil, with its interests to exchange. And warm in me came welling and throbbing an understanding of them all, as fellow human beings, fellow workers, a relationship which the sense of family had hitherto obstructed and bound.

Presently Father and the boys went away.

"Let's sit down a while and talk," Mother said to me, turning her back on the dishes. "Shall we go in the parlor?" she asked.

I voted against the parlor, and we sat in the kitchen.

"You've never once come up to the city, Mother," I said, "since I've been there. Won't you come some time? We could have a drive and a play."

"I've always wanted to go to the city again," she said; "I've always wanted to be there Sunday, and go to church in a big church." She looked out to see if Father was back. "Cossy," she said, "since you've been up there, have you seen much of any silverware?"

"Silverware?" I repeated.

"Not knives and forks. I mean pitchers—and coffee pots. I s'pose the houses you went to must use them common." And when I had answered, "I'd like to see some, some time, before I die," she said. "And I'd like to see a hothouse, with roses in winter."

"Come on then," I said. "We'll find some, Mother."

"The fare up and back is just exactly the fire-insurance money for three years," she said. "I always think of that."

Later, she went to baking pies, against the morrow. And she scolded somewhat about the lamp wick that was too short, and the green wood on the fire and I went and hugged her, merely because I seemed to know so well what had always made her cross. For here was the same condition which we fought for the other workers: badly remunerated toil, which was not the real expression of the toiler; and no recreation.

That night I went up to my little old room, and nothing was changed. The little tintype of me was still stuck in the mirror. "Shall I sleep with you?" Mother said. I lay with my hand in hers, immersed in a new knowledge.

My family was dear to me—not on the old hypocritical basis which would have pretended to a nearness that it did not feel. But dear through the only real basis, a basis which we had persistently baffled and inhibited all the while that we lived together: human understanding.