Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories

zed thing she went to work at a new place, a piano factory on the Northwest Side facing a branch of the Chicago River. She became secretary to a man who was treasurer of the company. He was a slende

t shrewd and within a short time had made two costly mistakes by which the company had lost money. "I have too much to do. My time is too mu

had thought him wealthy and he had tried to live up to people's estimate of his fortune. His son Walter had wanted to be a singer and had expecte

oney in any dignified way. Fortunately his wife had some money of her own. It was her money, invested in the piano manufacturing business, that had se

ons but he did not go. "What's the use of torturing myself and thinking of a life I cannot lead?" he said to himself. To his wife he pretended a growing int

d upon his judgment seem important to himself. It was a matter of money lost or gained and money meant nothing to him. "It's father's fault," he thought. "While he lived money never meant anything to me. I was brought up

the evening when he had come home from his office in his car she took him by the arm and led him eagerly about. The two children trotted at their heels. She talked glowingly. They stood at a low spot at the foot of the garden and she spoke of the necessity of putting in tile. The prospect seemed to excite her. "It will be the best land on the place when it's drained," she said. She stooped an

kindly and cheerful but back of the clouded, troubled eyes the fires of hatred burned slowly, persistently. It was as though he was trying to awaken from a troubled dream that gripped him, a dream that frightened a little, that was unending. He had contracted little physical habits. A sharp paper cutter lay on his desk. As

and at the edge of the suburban village. Also it took him away from his wife's talk, from her eternal planning for the garden's future. Here by the house tulip bulbs were to be put in in the fall. Later there would be a hedge of lilac bushes shutting off the house from the road. The men who lived in the other houses along the suburban street spent their Saturd

tinct within. It was an uncertain delicate business. He fixed himself a dark room upstairs in the house and spent his evenings there. One dipped the films into the de

lay, had once been the shore of Lake Michigan. The low hills sprang out of the flat land and were covered with forests. Beyond them the flat lands began again. The prairies went on indefinitely

in the hills, in her garden making things grow. It was a n

No matter how much or how hard he worked he would not have been a great singer. What did that matter? There was a way to live-a way of life in which such things did not matter. The delicate shades of things might be sought after. Before his eyes, there on

unfair. It didn't matter. Where did the truth lie? Was his wife, digging in her garden, having always a succession of sm

hat there was satisfaction in doing it. It was a little like running a business and making money by it. There was a deep seated vulgarity involved in the whole matter. His wife put he

as involved. Weeds grew in the garden, delicate shapely thing

g work he detested? The anger within him burned bright. The fire came into his conscious self. Why should a weed that is to be destroyed pretend to a veget

something she wanted to have grow. Their love making was like his puttering with a camera-to make the weekends pass. She came at him a little too determinedly- sure. She was plucking delicate weeds in order that things she had determined upon-"vegetables,"

his head and brought it down with a thump against the tree trunk. The sharp breaking sound-the delicate parts of the machine being broken-was sweet