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While common grievance had not made friends of the two men, mutual maltreatment had drawn their wives together, until no two women on the “block” were more intimate than Trina McTeague and Ryer’s wife. They made long visits to each other in the morning in their wrappers and curl papers, talking for hours over a cuppa tea, served upon the ledge of the sink or a corner of the laundry table. During these visits they avoided speaking of their husbands, because, although the whole “block” knew of the occasional strained relations of their families, the two women feigned to keep the secret from each other. And this in the face of the fact that Missis Ryer would sometimes come over to see Trina with a thin welt across her neck, or Trina return the visit with a blackened eye or a split lip.

Once, however, only once, they broke in upon their reticence. Many things came of the infringement. Among others this fantaisie .

During that particular night three dandelions had bloomed in the vacant lot behind the gas works, the unwonted warmth of the last few days had brought back the familiar odor of the garbage heaps, an open car had appeared on the cross town cable line and Bock beer was on draught at the “Wein Stubes”, and Polk street knew that Spring was at hand.

About nine o’clock Trina McTeague appeared on the back steps of her house rolling her washtub before her, preparing to do her monthly washing in the open air on that fine morning. She and Ryer’s wife usually observed this hated rite at the same time, calling shrilly to one another as their backs bent and straightened over the scrubbing-boards. But that morning Trina looked long for Missis Ryer and at last fell a-wondering.

The fact of the matter was that the night before Ryer had come home sober and had found occasion to coerce Missis Ryer with a trunk-strap. By a curious coincidence McTeague had come home drunk the same evening, and for two hours Trina had been hard put to it to dodge his enormous fists and his hurled boots. (Nor had she been invariably successful. )

At that moment the ex-dentist was sleeping himself sober under the stairs in the front hall, and the whilom stock-dealer was drinking himself drunk in the “Wein Stube” across the street.

When eleven o’clock had struck and Missis Ryer had not appeared, Trina dried her smoking arms on her skirt and, going through the hole in the backyard fence, entered the kitchen of the Ryer’s house and called. Missis Ryer came into the kitchen in a blue cotton wrapper and carpet slippers. Her hair was hanging down her back (it was not golden).

Evidently she had just arisen.

“Ain’t you goin’ to wash this mornin’, Missis Ryer?” asked Trina McTeague.

“Good Mornin’, Trina,” said the other, adding doggedly, as she sat down hard in a broken chain “I’m sick and tired a-washin’ an’ workin’ for Ryer.”

She drew up instinctively to the cold stove, and propped her chin upon her knuckles. The loose sleeve of the wrapper fell away from her forearm, and Trina saw the fresh marks of the trunk-strap. Evidently Ryer had not held that strap by the buckle-end.

This was the first time Missis Ryer had ever mentioned her husband to Trina “Hoh!” ejaculated Trina, speaking before she thought, “it ain’t alwus such fun workin’ for Mac, either.”

There was a brief silence. Both the women remained for a moment looking vaguely out of the kitchen door, absorbed in thought, very curious, each wondering what next the other would say. The conversation, almost without their wishing it, had suddenly begun upon untried and interesting ground. Missis Ryer said: