life. She had
directness of aim and concentration of purpose.

No one thought the little workgirl's aims very high; no one ever paused
to consider her purpose either high or noble; but Sue swerved not from
aim or purpose, either to the right hand or to the left.

She was the bread-winner in the small family. That was her present
manifest duty. And some day she would take Giles away to live in the
country. That was her ambition. Every thought she had to spare from her
machine-work and her many heavy duties went to this far-off, grand
result. At night she pictured it; as she walked to and from her place of
work she dwelt upon it.

Some day she and Giles would have a cottage in the country together.
Very vague were Sue's ideas of what country life was like. She had never
once been in the country; she had never seen green fields, nor smelt, as
they grow fresh in the hedges, wild flowers. She imagined that flowers
grew either in bunches, as they were sold in Convent Garden, or singly
in pots. It never entered into her wildest dreams that the ground could
be carpeted with the soft sheen of bluebells or the summer snow of wood
anemones, or that the hedge banks could hold great clusters of starry
primroses. No, Sue had never seen the place where she and Giles would
live together when they were old. She pictured it like the town, only
clean--very clean--with the possibility of procuring eggs really fresh
and milk really pure, and of perhaps now and then getting a bunch of
flowers for Giles without spending many pence on them.

People would have called it a poor dream, for Sue had no knowledge to
guide her, and absolutely no imagination to fill in details; but, all
the same, it was golden in its influence on the young girl, imparting
resolution to her face and purpose to her eyes, and encircling her
round, in her young and defenseless womanhood, as a guardian angel
spreading his wings about her.

She walked along to-day brightly as usual. The day was a cold one, but
Sue was in good spirits.

She was in good time at her place, and sat down instantly to her work.

A girl sat by her side. Her name was Mary Jones. She was a weakly girl,
who coughed long and often as she worked.

"I must soon give up, Sue," she panted between slight pauses in her
work. "This 'ere big machine seems to tear me hall to bits, like; and
then I gets so hot, and when we is turned out in the middle o' the day
the cold seems to strike so dreadful bit