d. But as they sat together side by side at table, his
look toward her was one of trust and comfort. His glance traveled back
over a long vista of years seen to them as their eyes met, invisible to
those about--years that had glorified confidence in this life as it
passed and transfigured it into the promise of another life to come.

* * * * *

MAKING CLOTHING IN CHICAGO

* * * * *

CHAPTER IV

MAKING CLOTHING IN CHICAGO

On arriving in Chicago I addressed myself to the ladies of Hull House,
asking for a tenement family who would take a factory girl to board. I
intended starting out without money to see at least how far I could go
before putting my hand into the depths where an emergency fund was
pinned in a black silk bag.

It was the first day of May. A hot wind blew eddies of dust up and down
the electric car tracks; the streets were alive with children; a group
swarmed in front of each doorstep, too large to fit into the house
behind it. Down the long, regular avenues that stretched right and left
there was a broken line of tenements topped by telegraph wires and
bathed in a soft cloud of black soot falling from a chimney in the
neighbourhood. The sidewalks were a patchwork of dirt, broken
paving-stones and wooden boards. The sunshine was hot and gloomy. There
were no names on the corner lamps and the house numbers were dull and
needed repainting. It was already late in the afternoon: I had but an
hour or two before dark to find a lodging. The miserable, overcrowded
tenement houses repelled me, yet I dreaded that there should not be room
among them for one more bread-winner to lodge. I hailed a cluster of
children in the gutter:

"Say," I said, "do you know where Mrs. Hicks lives to?"

They crowded around, eager. The tallest boy, with curly red hair and
freckles, pointed out Mrs. Hicks' residence, the upper windows of a
brick flat that faced the world like a prison wall. After I had rung and
waited for the responding click from above, a cross-eyed Italian woman
with a baby in her arms motioned to me from the step where she was
sitting that I must go down a side alley to find Mrs. Hicks. Out of a
promiscuous heap of filth, a broken-down staircase led upward to a row
of green blinds and a screen door. Somebody's housekeeping was scattered
around in torn bits of linen and tomato cans.

The screen door opened to my knock