kitchen fire like you, but we can't keep it burning as late as this.
The rest went to bed an hour ago to keep warm. Maria has got more
cold. She did seem better one spell, but now she's worse again. Our
chamber is freezing cold, and we haven't had a fire in it since the
strike. John Sargent has ransacked every town within twenty miles
for work, but he can't get any, and his sick sister keeps sending to
him for money. He looks as if he was just about done, too. He went
off somewhere after supper. A great supper! He don't smoke a pipe
nowadays. Father don't get the medicine he ought to have, and that
cold spell he just about perished for a little whiskey. The bedroom
was like ice with no fire in the sitting-room, and he didn't sleep
warm. It's one awful thing after another happening. Did you know
Mamie Brady took laudanum last night?"

"Good land!" said Fanny.

"Yes, she did. Ed Flynn has been playing fast and loose with her for
a long time, and she's none too well balanced, and when it came to
her not having enough to eat, and to keep her warm, and her mother
nagging at her all the time--you know what an awful hard woman her
mother is--she got desperate. She gulped it down when the last car
went past and Ed Flynn hadn't come; she had been watchin' out for
him; then she told her mother, and her mother shook her, then run
for Dr. Fox, and he called in Dr. Lord, and they worked with a
stomach-pump till morning, and she isn't out of danger yet. Then
that isn't all. Willy Jones's mother is failing. He was over to our
house last evening, telling us about it, and he fairly cried, poor
boy. He said he actually could not get her what she needed to make
her comfortable this awful winter. It was all he could do with odd
jobs to keep the roof over their heads, that she hadn't actually
enough to eat and keep her warm. It seemed as if he would die when
he told about it. And that isn't all. Those little Blake children
next door are fairly starving. They are going around to the
neighbors' swill-buckets--it's a fact--just like little hungry dogs,
and it's precious little they find in them. Mrs. Wetherhed has let
her sewing-machine go, and Edward Morse is going to be sold out for
taxes. And that isn't all." Abby lowered her voice a little. She
cast an apprehensive glance at the door of the other room, and at
Amabel. "Mamie Bemis has gone to the bad. I had it straight. She's
in Boston. She didn't have enough to pay for her board, and g