I go to work in a factory--not your
factory, but one away off the other side of the river. I have to walk
long, long distance in the cold, dark morning, and walk back again at
night, but I am happy for I earn money to help at home. Mother she go to
work too, in a great steam laundry where she stand all day at a big
machine. She very thin and pale, and so tired at night she can hardly
walk home. But she, too, is content; for she have work to do and work
means money to buy food for the little ones and for the blind
grandmother.

"We get along pretty well for almost three years. Then, just a year ago,
the factory I work for shuts down. Times are hard, there is no more work
for us, we must go. We do go. We try first one place, then another, to
find work. It is the same story everywhere, times are hard and there is
no work for us.

"Then mother gets that dreadful cold. The laundry where she works is
always so very hot. She come out at night into the cold air; her coat is
thin for she cannot buy a warm one and she get a dreadful chill one
night as she comes home. She cough all the time after that. It shake her
nearly all to pieces; but she still go to her work till one day she fall
beside her machine. They bring her home and we put her into bed and she
never leave it again.

"What to do then we know not. One, two, three days pass; at last there
is a day when grandmother and I eat nothing. We give the last scraps of
bread to the children and spend the last two pennies on milk for
mother. There is nothing left for us. We not sleep that night; we sit by
the empty stove and we think all night. Grandmother is praying all the
time; she is, oh so good, that grandmother. She pray and she pray, and
she tell me God is kind and good, He will show us a way. Me, I am not
good like that. I say to her God cannot be kind and merciful, or he
would not treat us so. What have we done that He punish us like that?
She say to me:

"'Hush, child, hush; you very bad, very wicked. God is good and kind and
loving. He not try us any more than we can bear; He send us help soon if
we trust in Him.'

"Next morning is cold, very cold; we have no fire and no food. I have
been everywhere to look for work and find nothing. But I put on my hat
to go out and try once more. Grandmother ask me what I do. I tell her I
go again to look for work. She say: 'No, child, you stay here with your
mother to-day; it is my turn now.'

"She is old; she is blind and I