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A plate full of pancakes and a cup of black coffee were set before him on the kitchen table. He gulped the coffee down black and asked for another.

“Son, I don’t want to nag you, but I’m worried about your health. You never get enough sleep and every morning you gulp down black coffee like that. Coffee is not good for your kidneys. You know the human body can stand only so much, and no more. A boy your age, doing the kind of work you do, has to get his proper rest. If you keep on like this, you’ll be getting into consumption at twenty-five.”

Studs hadn’t listened to her, and with his mouth stuffed with pancakes, said that he was all right.

“Bill, always remember that the wise guy knows that he can always have another night, and doesn’t try to do every-thing in one evening,” Lonigan said.

The mother looked at the clock, and dashed in to awaken the girls.

“Bill, a man’s health is like Humpty Dumpty. Once it is gone, nothing can repair it, not with all the money in the world, or all the king’s men and horses. It can’t be repaired like an automobile.”

Studs felt like throwing the plate of syrupy pancakes at his father.

An uproar started in the girls’ bedroom, and Fran was heard threatening to pull Loretta’s hair out if she ever again wore her stockings.

“This family will put me in the nut house yet!” Lonigan said, wincing. He arose and went to stop the quarrel.

Studs was almost finished when Lonigan returned.

“Bill, you know, girls and women have to be handled with kid gloves and jollied along. So when Frances comes out to breakfast, kid her a little. You know, say, Good morning! How is the charming slim queen on this bright and sunny morning?”

Studs’ face sank. He arose from the table. His father told him that if he’d wait, he could ride to work with him in the Ford. Studs said it was no use of having to go out of the way, he could take the street car. He was glad to get out. But he was damn tired.

II

“Kid, I’ll be damned if my old lady didn’t go and get sick again,” Mort said, from the other side of the small vacant dining-room in an apartment building where they worked.

“Yeah,” said Studs, brushing over the cream-colored paint with measured strokes. He yawned.

“You know, a young chap like yourself who’s footloose as the winds don’t know how well off you are,” Mort said.

Studs yawned. He dipped his brush, tapped it against the side of the pail, drew it down the center of the wall.

“Sometimes when you get married, you don’t know what you’re being let into. You see a girl, a nice sweet kid, and she’s cherry. You think, now I’ll be happy with her, and we’re just cut out for one another. Well, one thing and another happens, and first thing you know, you’re married. You take her on a honeymoon, and there’s nothing at all in life like those first nights. Now, take my wife. She was just as pretty as a picture. I’ll show you a picture of her took when we was just married. And then our kids came along, and we thought things was going to be nice and smooth, and that we’d find comfort in the kids and someone to take care of us in our old age. And then eight years ago when our last youngster was born, ‘my wife, she gets what they call a milk leg, you see, that’s some kind of a clot that makes your leg swell up, all out of shape, and her heart goes back on her, and now the doctor says that she’s got to be careful and any kind of excitement might be the finish of her.”

“That’s tough,” Studs said, feeling that he had to say some-thing.

Mort had told him the same story before, almost every day that they’d ever worked together. He went on painting, evening off the last coating. His arm was tired. He wasn’t at all interested in the damn work. He liked to look at it when it was finished, and see that it was a good job, and he always took pains to do a good job because he couldn’t stand to slop on paint and leave it any old way. But goddamn it, he hated to think of going on, painting walls day after day after day, risking lead-poisoning