“Yes, those who work in the shop get eight cents.  But what can you do?  There is not enough work for the young.  The old have no chance.  Often one pair is all I can get.  Sometimes, like to-day, I am given eight pair to finish before night.”

I asked her the hours she worked, and she said it depended on the season.

“In the summer, when there is a rush order, I work from five in the morning to nine at night.  But in the winter it is too cold.  The hands do not early get over the stiffness.  Then you must work later—­till after midnight sometimes.

“Yes, it has been a bad summer.  The hard times.  God must be angry.  This is the first work the boss has given me in a week.  It is true, one cannot eat much when there is no work.  I am used to it.  I have sewed all my life, in the old country and here in San Francisco—­thirty-three years.

“If you are sure of the rent, it is all right.  The houseman is very kind, but he must have his rent.  It is fair.  He only charges three dollars for this room.  That is cheap.  But it is not easy for you to find all of three dollars every month.”

She ceased talking, and, nodding her head, went on stitching.

“You have to be very careful as to how you spend your earnings,” I suggested.

She nodded emphatically.

“After the rent it’s not so bad.  Of course you can’t buy meat.  And there is no milk for the coffee.  But always there is one meal a day, and often two.”

She said this last proudly.  There was a smack of success in her words.  But as she stitched on in silence, I noticed the sadness in her pleasant eyes and the droop of her mouth.  The look in her eyes became far away.  She rubbed the dimness hastily out of them; it interfered with her stitching.

“No, it is not the hunger that makes the heart ache,” she explained.  “You get used to being hungry.  It is for my child that I cry.  It was the machine that killed her.  It is true she worked hard, but I cannot understand.  She was strong.  And she was young—­only forty; and she worked only thirty years.  She began young, it is true; but my man died.  The boiler exploded down at the works.  And what were we to do?  She was ten, but she was very strong.  But the machine killed her.  Yes, it did.  It killed her, and she was the fastest worker in the shop.  I have thought about it often, and I know.  That is why I cannot work in the shop.  The machine bothers my head.  Always I hear it saying, ’I did it, I did it.’  And it says that all day long.  And then I think of my daughter, and I cannot work.”

The moistness was in her old eyes again, and she had to wipe it away before she could go on stitching.