It was a great help to a person who had to toil all the week to be able to look forward to some such relaxation as this on Saturday nights.  The family was too poor and too hardworked to make many acquaintances; in Packingtown, as a rule, people know only their near neighbors and shopmates, and so the place is like a myriad of little country villages.  But now there was a member of the family who was permitted to travel and widen her horizon; and so each week there would be new personalities to talk about,—­how so-and-so was dressed, and where she worked, and what she got, and whom she was in love with; and how this man had jilted his girl, and how she had quarreled with the other girl, and what had passed between them; and how another man beat his wife, and spent all her earnings upon drink, and pawned her very clothes.  Some people would have scorned this talk as gossip; but then one has to talk about what one knows.

It was one Saturday night, as they were coming home from a wedding, that Tamoszius found courage, and set down his violin case in the street and spoke his heart; and then Marija clasped him in her arms.  She told them all about it the next day, and fairly cried with happiness, for she said that Tamoszius was a lovely man.  After that he no longer made love to her with his fiddle, but they would sit for hours in the kitchen, blissfully happy in each other’s arms; it was the tacit convention of the family to know nothing of what was going on in that corner.

They were planning to be married in the spring, and have the garret of the house fixed up, and live there.  Tamoszius made good wages; and little by little the family were paying back their debt to Marija, so she ought soon to have enough to start life upon—­only, with her preposterous softheartedness, she would insist upon spending a good part of her money every week for things which she saw they needed.  Marija was really the capitalist of the party, for she had become an expert can painter by this time—­she was getting fourteen cents for every hundred and ten cans, and she could paint more than two cans every minute.  Marija felt, so to speak, that she had her hand on the throttle, and the neighborhood was vocal with her rejoicings.

Yet her friends would shake their heads and tell her to go slow; one could not count upon such good fortune forever—­there were accidents that always happened.  But Marija was not to be prevailed upon, and went on planning and dreaming of all the treasures she was going to have for her home; and so, when the crash did come, her grief was painful to see.

For her canning factory shut down!  Marija would about as soon have expected to see the sun shut down—­the huge establishment had been to her a thing akin to the planets and the seasons.  But now it was shut!  And they had not given her any explanation, they had not even given her a day’s warning; they had simply posted a notice one Saturday that all hands would be paid off that afternoon, and would not resume work for at least a month!  And that was all that there was to it—­her job was gone!