"No, you're quite right. That's not the point," he agreed quickly.
Presently she saw him lean forward in the darkness, and put his head in his hands. Susan longed to put her arm about him, and draw the rough head to her shoulder and comfort him.
At breakfast time the next morning, Billy walked into Mrs. Cudahy's dining-room, very white, very serious, determined lines drawn about his firm young mouth. Susan looked at him, half-fearful, half- pitying.
"How late did you walk, Bill?" she asked, for he had gone out again after bringing her back to the house the night before.
"I didn't go to bed," he said briefly. He sat down by the table. "Well, I guess Miss Brown put her finger on the very heart of the matter, Clem," said he.
"And how's that?" asked Clem Cudahy. His wife, in the very act of pouring the newcomer a cup of coffee, stopped with arrested arm. Susan experienced a sensation of panic.
"Oh, but I didn't mean anything!" she said eagerly. "Don't mind what I said, Bill!"
But the matter had been taken out of her hands now, and in less than an hour the news spread over the entire settlement. Mr. Oliver was going to resign!
The rest of the morning and the early afternoon went by in a confused rush. At three o'clock Billy, surrounded by vociferous allies, walked to the hall, for a stormy and exhausting meeting.
"The boys wouldn't listen to him at all at first," said Clem, in giving the women an account of it, later. "But eventually they listened, and eventually he carried the day. It was all too logical to be ignored and turned aside, he told them. They had not been fighting for any personal interest, or any one person. They had asked for this change, and that, and the other,--and these things they might still win. He, after all, had nothing to do with the issue; as a recognized labor union they might stand on their own feet."
After that the two committees met, in old Mr. Carpenter's office, and Billy came home to Susan and Mrs. Cudahy, and sat for a tense hour playing moodily with Lizzie's baby.
Then the committee came back, almost as silently as it had come last night. But this time it brought news. The strike was over.
Very quietly, very gravely, they made it known that terms had been reached at last. Practically everything had been granted, on the single condition that William Oliver resign from his position in the Iron Works, and his presidency of the union.