“Hush, Letty, hush!  Mother’s too sick to get it.”  But the child continues to fret and plead.  Finally with a groan Mrs. White stretches out her hand and gets the tin mug of water, of that vile and dirty water which has brought death to so many in the mill village.  The child drinks it greedily.  I can hear it suck the fluid.  Then the woman herself staggers to her feet, rises with dreadful illness upon her, and all through the hot stuffy night in the close air of the loft growing momentarily more fetid, unwholesome, intolerable—­she rises to be violently sick over and over again.  It seems an indefinite number of times to one who lies awake listening, and must seem unceasing to the poor wretch who returns to her bed only to rise again.

She groans and suffers and bites her exclamations short.  Twice she goes to the window and by the light of the electric lamp pours laudanum into a glass and takes it to still her pain and her need.

The odours become so nauseous that I am fain to cover my face and head.  The child fed on salt ham and pork is restless and thirsty all night and begs for water at short intervals.  At last the demand is too much for the poor agonized mother—­she takes refuge in silencing unworthy, and to which one feels her gentleness must be forced.  “Hark!  The cat will get you, Letty!  See that cat?” And the feline horror in nameless form, evoked in an awe-inspiring whisper, controls the little creature, who murmurs, sobs and subsides.

What spirit deeper than her character has hitherto displayed stirs the mill-girl in the bed next to me?  Possibly the tragedy in the other bed; possibly the tragedy of her own youth.  At all events, whatever burden is on her, her cross is heavy!  She murmurs in her dreams, in a voice more mature, more serious than any tone of hers has indicated: 

“Oh, my God!”

It is a strange cry—­call—­appeal.  It rings solemn to me as I lie and watch and pity.  Hours of night which should be to the labourer peaceful, full of repose after the day, drag along from nine o’clock, when we went to bed, till three.  At three Mrs. White falls into a doze.  I envy her.  Over me the vermin have run riot; I have killed them on my neck and my arms.  When it seemed that flesh and blood must succumb, and sleep, through sheer pity, take hold of us, a stirring begins in the kitchen below which in its proximity seems a part of the very room we occupy.  The landlady, Mrs. Jones, has arisen; she is making her fire.  At a quarter to four Mrs. Jones begins her frying; at four a deep, blue, ugly smoke has ascended the stairway to us.  This smoke is thick with odours—­the odour of bad grease and bad meat.  Its cloud conceals the beds from me and I can scarcely pierce its curtain to look through the window.  It settles down over the beds like a creature; it insinuates itself into the clothes that hang upon the wall.  So permeating is it that the odour of fried food clings to everything I wear and haunts me all day.  I can hear the sputtering of the saucepan and the fall and flap of the pieces of meat as she drops them in to fry. I know what they are, for I have seen them the night before—­great crimson bits of flesh torn to pieces and arranged in rows by the fingers of a ragged Negro as he crouched by the kitchen table.