g, Cully and Patsy on the floor, Jennie listening absent-mindedly,
her thoughts far away,--when there came a knock at the kitchen door.
Jennie flew to open it.

Outside stood two women. One was Mrs. Todd, the other the haggard,
pinched, careworn woman who had spoken to her that morning at her
room-door in the tenement.

"They want to see you, mother," said Jennie, all the light gone out of
her eyes. What could be the matter with Carl, she thought. It had been
this way for a week.

"Well, bring 'em in. Hold on, I'll go meself."

"She would come, Tom," said Mrs. Todd, unwinding her shawl from her head
and shoulders; "an' ye mustn't blame me, fer it's none of my doin's.
Walk in, mum; ye can speak to her yerself. Why, where is she?"--looking
out of the door into the darkness. "Oh, here ye are; I thought ye'd
skipped."

"Do ye remember me?" said the woman, stepping into the room, her gaunt
face looking more wretched under the flickering light of the candle than
it had done in the morning. "I'm the new-comer in the tenements. Ye were
in to see my girl th'other night. We're in great trouble."

"She's not dead?" said Tom, sinking into a chair.

"No, thank God; we've got her still wid us; but me man's come home
to-night nigh crazy. He's a-walkin' the floor this minute, an' so I goes
to Mrs. Todd, an' she come wid me. If he loses the job now, we're in the
street. Only two weeks' work since las' fall, an' the girl gettin' worse
every day, and every cint in the bank gone, an' hardly a chair lef' in
the place. An' I says to him, 'I'll go meself. She come in to see Katie
th' other night; she'll listen to me.' We lived in Newark, mum, an' had
four rooms and a mahogany sofa and two carpets, till the strike come
in the clock-factory, an' me man had to quit; an' then all winter--oh,
we're not used to the likes of this!"--covering her face with her shawl
and bursting into tears.

Tom had risen to her feet, her face expressing the deepest sympathy
for the woman, though she was at a loss to understand the cause of her
visitor's distress.

"Is yer man fired?" she asked.

"No, an' wouldn't be if they'd let him alone. He's sober an' steady,
an' never tastes a drop, and brings his money home to me every Saturday
night, and always done; an' now they"--

"Well, what's the matter, then?" Tom could not stand much beating about
the bush.

"Why, don't ye know they've give notice?" she said in astonishment;
then, as a misgiving entered