you mean you'll cheat me of the whole dozen because half an inch on
one is gone wrong?"

"Call it what you like," he said. "R. & Co. ain't going to send out
anything but first-class work. Stand out of the way and let the next
have a chance. There's your three dollars and forty cents."

Rose went out silently, choking down rash words that would have lost her
work altogether, but as she left the dark stairs and felt again the
cutting wind from the river, she stood still, something more than
despair on her face. The children could hardly fare worse without her
than with her. The river could not be colder than this cold world that
gave her no chance, and that had no place for anything but rascals. She
turned toward it as the thought came, but some one had her arm, and she
cried out suddenly and tried to wrench away.

"Easy now," a voice said. "You're breakin' your heart for trouble, an'
here I am in the nick o' time. Come with me an' you'll have no more of
it, for my pocket's full to-night, an' that's more 'n it'll be in the
mornin' if you don't take me in tow."

It was a sailor from a merchantman just in, and Rose looked at him for a
moment. Then she took his arm and walked with him toward Roosevelt
Street.

It might be dishonor, but it was certainly food and warmth for the
children, and what did it matter? She had fought her fight for twenty
years, and it had been a vain struggle. She took his money when morning
came, and went home with the look that is on her face to-day.

"I'll marry you out of hand," the sailor said to her; but Rose answered,
"No man alive'll ever marry me after this night," and she has kept her
word. She has her trade, and it is a prosperous one, in which wages
never fail. The children are warm and have no need to cry for hunger any
more.

"It's not a long life we live," Rose says quietly. "My kind die early,
but the children will be well along, an' all the better when the time
comes that they've full sense for not having to know what way the living
comes. But let God Almighty judge who's to blame most--I that was
driven, or them that drove me to the pass I'm in."

CHAPTER THIRD.

SOME METHODS OF A PROSPEROUS FIRM.

"The emancipation of women is certainly well under way, when all
underwear can be bought more cheaply than it is possible to make it up
at home, and simple suits of very good material make it hardly more
difficult for a woman to clothe herself without thought or worry,