As the family sat silent and stupefied, old Tom looked up from
his paper, fixed his keen, mocking eyes on Susan.
"I see, here," said he, "that _we_ are so rich that they want to
raise the President's salary so as he can entertain
_decently_--and to build palaces at foreign courts so as our
representatives'll live worthy of _us_!"
CHAPTER XX
ON Monday at the lunch hour--or, rather, halfhour--Susan
ventured in to see the boss.
Matson had too recently sprung from the working class and was
too ignorant of everything outside his business to have made
radical changes in his habits. He smoked five-cent cigars
instead of "twofurs"; he ate larger quantities of food, did not
stint himself in beer or in treating his friends in the evenings
down at Wielert's beer garden. Also he wore a somewhat better
quality of clothing; but he looked precisely what he was. Like
all the working class above the pauper line, he made a Sunday
toilet, the chief features of which were the weekly bath and the
weekly clean white shirt. Thus, it being only Monday morning, he
was looking notably clean when Susan entered--and was morally
wound up to a higher key than he would be as the week wore on.
At sight of her his feet on the leaf of the desk wavered, then
became inert; it would not do to put on manners with any of the
"hands." Thanks to the bath, he was not exuding his usual odor
that comes from bolting much strong, cheap food.
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