factory do. They don't get but three dollars a
week, and it takes seventy-five cents for their room, so they haven't
got anything for board. Mary Jones says she's settled on pie, because
it stays by better'n anything, and once in a while she goes down to
Fulton Market and has some coffee. I do too, but it spoils you for next
day. You keep thinking how'd you'd like a cup when the chills go
crawling all over you, but it's no use."

"Couldn't it be made in the store? The girls could club together, and
it would cost much less than your pies and candy. The gas is always
burning, and you could have a little water-boiler."

"You don't know much about stores to think that. Why, Mr. Levy watches
like a cat to see we don't eat peanuts or candy: we're fined if he
catches us. I've a good mind to take board at the 'Home,' only I should
hate to be bossed 'round, and you can't get in very often, either, it's
so crowded. But I don't mind so much now, for you see"--Katy's pale
cheeks grew pink--"Jim and I don't mean to wait long. He has ten
dollars a week, and we can manage on that. He says he's 'most poisoned
with the stuff his boarding-house keeper gives him, and he wants me to
keep house. I just laugh. That's a servant-girl's work: 'tain't mine."

The old story. I had seen "Jim," and knew him as rather a
sensible-looking young fellow for an East Side clerk in a cheap store.
What sort of future could lie before them? What help could come from
this untrained child, herself helpless and with too limited
intelligence to understand what demand the new life made upon her? and
could any way be found to open her eyes and make her desire better
knowledge?

Busy with this always fresh problem, I had come to a side street
leading to the market from which two or three small groceries draw
their supplies, and stopped for a moment to look at the flabby,
half-decayed vegetables, the coarse beef and measly-looking pork from
which comes the sickly, heavy smell preceding positive putrefaction.

"Look away! Get the sense of it all," said a brisk voice behind me--a
voice I knew well as that of one who gave days, and often nights, to
work in these very streets. "Did you see that tall woman with the big
basket and a face like a chimney-swallow? She runs a boarding-house
'round on Madison street, and this is the stuff she feeds them on. Poor
wretch! She has a drunken husband and three drinking sons. She means
well, would like to do better by her board