“Can’t you work?” I asked.  “If the children are put in a day nursery they would be well looked after, and you would probably be more comfortable in a good factory than here.”

“A good factory!” The inflection in her voice was one of listless tolerance for my ignorance.  “I don’t reckon you ever worked in one.  There ain’t none of ’em good.  Some’s better than others, but when you get up at five o’clock on winter mornings and make the fire and melt the water, if it’s frozen, to wash your face with, and—­”

“Does it freeze in here?” Bettina, who had by effort restrained herself from taking part in the conversation, leaned forward and dug her hands deep in her lap.  “Does it really freeze in this hot room?”

“It ain’t hot in here at night.  Last winter it froze ’most every night for a month.  Mis’ Cotter was boarding with me last winter, her and her little girl both.  She’s the lady what rents the room between the kitchen and the front room from me.  She sews on carpets and the place she works at is right far from here.  She warn’t well last winter—­some kind of misery is always on her—­and she asked me to board her so she wouldn’t have to do no cooking before she goes away in the morning and when she comes back at night.”

“With a swift movement of her hand Mrs. Gibbons caught the little girl, who, behind her back, was making ready to slip off the bed and on the floor, but as she swung her again in place she kept up her talking, and by neither rise nor fall was the monotone of her voice broken.

“I had to get up at five so as to have breakfast in time, for I can’t get the room warm and the things cooked in less’n an hour, and she has to leave here a little after six so as to take her little girl to the nursery before she goes to her place, and they ain’t noways close together.  The stars are shining when she goes out and they’re shining when she comes in; that is, if the weather’s good.  She’s been so wore out lately she’s been taking her meals again with me, but I don’t see much of her.  She goes to bed the minute she’s through supper.”

Bettina twisted in her chair.  “Do you eat and sleep in here, too?” she asked.  Her eyes were on Mrs. Gibbons.  Carefully she kept them from mine.  “Do you always eat in here?”

“We eat in here all the time and sleep in here in winter, because there ain’t but one fire.  That goes out early, which is why the water freezes.  Jimmy has to bring it up from the yard in buckets, and as the nurse-lady who comes down here says we must have fresh air in the room, being ’tis all four of us sleep in it, I keep the window open at night.  I don’t take no stock in all this fresh-air talk.  ’Taint only the water what gets froze—­”

“Why don’t you cover a bucketful of it with one of those tubs?” Again Bettina’s forefinger pointed.  “That would keep the wind off and the water wouldn’t freeze if it was covered up.”