The Workingman's Paradise. Джон Миллер

the shop," went on Mrs. Somerville. "They told me last time I went that after this lot they shouldn't pay as much because they could easily get the things done for less. I asked what they'd pay, and they said they didn't know but they'd give me as good a show for work as ever if I cared to take the new prices, because they felt sorry for the children. I suppose I ought to feel thankful to them."

      Nellie looked up now—her face flushed. "Reduce, prices again!" she cried. "How can they?"

      "I don't know how they can, but they can," answered Mrs. Somerville. "I suppose we can be thankful so long as they don't want to be paid for letting us work for them. Old Church's daughter got married to some officer of the fleet last week, I'm told, and I suppose we've got to help give her a send-off."

      "It's shameful," exclaimed Nellie. "What they paid two years ago hardly kept one alive, and they've reduced twice since then. Oh! They'll all pay for it some day."

      "Let's hope so," said Mrs. Somerville. "Only we'll have to pay them for it pretty soon, Nellie, or there won't be enough strength left in us to pay them with. I've got beyond minding anything much, but I would like to get even with old Church."

      They had talked away, the two women, ignoring Ned. He listened. He understood that from the misery of this woman was drawn the pomp and pride, the silks and gold and glitter of the society belle, and he thought with a cruel satisfaction of what might happen to that society belle if this half-starved woman got hold of her. Measure for measure, pang for pang, what torture, what insults, what degradation, could atone for the life that was suffered in this miserable room? And for the life of "that girl downstairs" who had given up in despair?

      "How about a union now?" asked Nellie, turning with the first pieces of another coat to the machine.

      "Work's too dull," was the answer. "Wait for a few months till the busy season comes and then I wouldn't wonder if you could get one. The women were all feeling hurt about the reduction, and one girl did start talking strike, but what's the use now? I couldn't say anything, you know, but I'll find out where the others live and you can go round and talk to them after a while. If there was a paper that would show old Church up it might do good, but there isn't."

      Then the rattle of the machine began again, Nellie working with an adeptness that showed her to be an old hand. Ned could see now that the coats were of cheap coarse stuff and that the sewing in them was not fine tailoring. The cut material in Nellie's hands fairly flew into shape as she rapidly moved it to and fro under the hurrying needle with her slim fingers. Her foot moved unceasingly on the treadle. Ned watching her, saw the great beads of perspiration slowly gather on her forehead and then trickle down her nose and cheeks to fall upon the work before her.

      "My word! But it's hot!" exclaimed Nellie at last, as the noise stopped for a moment while she changed the position of her work. "Why don't you open the door?"

      "I don't care to before the place is tidy," answered Mrs. Somerville, who had washed her cups and plates in a pan and had just put Ned on one of the shaky chairs while she shook and arranged the meagre coverings of the bed.

      "Is he still carrying on?" enquired Nellie, nodding her head at the partition and evidently alluding to someone on the other side.

      "Of course, drink, drink, drink, whenever he gets a chance, and that seems pretty well always. She helps him sometimes, and sometimes she keeps sober and abuses him. He kicked her down stairs the other night, and the children all screaming, and her shrieking, and him swearing. It was a nice time."

      Once more the machining interrupted the conversation, which thus was renewed from time to time in the pauses of the noise. The room being "tidied," Mrs. Somerville sat down on the bed and taking up some pieces of cloth began to tack them together with needle and thread, ready for the machine. It never seemed to occur to her to rest even for a moment.

      "Nellie's a quick one," she remarked to Ned. "At the shop they always tell those who grumble what she earned one week. Twenty-four and six, wasn't it, Nellie? But they don't say she worked eighteen hours a day for it."

      Nellie flushed uneasily and Ned felt uncomfortable. Both thought of the repayment of the latter's friendly loan. The girl made her machine rattle still more hurriedly to prevent any further remarks trending in that direction. At last Mrs. Somerville, her tacking finished, got up and took the work from Nellie's hands.

      "I'm not going to take your whole morning," she said. "You don't get many friends from the bush to see you, so just go away and I'll get on. I'm much obliged to you as it is, Nellie."

      Nellie did not object. After wiping her hands, face and neck with her handkerchief she put on her gloves and hat. The sharp-faced woman was already at the machine and amid the din, which drowned their good-byes, they departed as they came. Ned felt more at ease when his feet felt the first step of the narrow creaking stairway. It is hardly a pleasant sensation for a man to be in the room of a stranger who, without any unfriendliness, does not seem particularly aware that he is there. They left the door open. Far down the stifling stairs Ned could hear the ceaseless whirring of the machine driven by the woman who slaved ceaselessly for her children's bread in this Sydney sink. He looked around for the children when they got to the alley again but could not see them among the urchins who lolled about half-suffocated now. The sun was almost overhead for they had been upstairs for an hour. The heat in this mere canyon path between cliffs of houses was terrible. Ned himself began to feel queerly.

      "Let's get out of this, Nellie," he said.

      "How would you like never to be able to get out of it?" she answered, as they turned towards the bustling street, opposite to the way they had previously come.

      "Who's that Mrs. Somerville?" he asked, not answering.

      "I got to know her when I lived there," replied Nellie. "Her husband used to be well off, I fancy, but had bad luck and got down pretty low. There was a strike on at some building and he went on as a laborer, blacklegging. The pickets followed him to the house, abusing him, and made him stubborn, but I got her alone that night and talked to her and explained things a bit and she talked to him and next day he joined the union. Then he got working about as a labourer, and one day some rotten scaffolding broke, and he came down with it. The union got a few pounds for her, but the boss was a regular swindler who was always beating men out of their wages and doing anything to get contracts and running everything cheap, so there was nothing to be got out of him."

      "Did her husband die?"

      "Yes, next day. She had three children and another came seven months after. One died last summer just before the baby was born. She's had a pretty hard time of it, but she works all the time and she generally has work."

      "It seems quite a favour to get work here," observed Ned.

      "If you were a girl you'd soon find out what a favour it is sometimes," answered Nellie quietly, as they came out into the street.

CHAPTER III.

       Table of Contents

      SHORN LIKE SHEEP.

      "How many hours do you work?" asked Nellie of the waitress.

      "About thirteen," answered the girl, glancing round to see if the manager was watching her talking. "But it's not the hours so much. It's the standing."

      "You're not doing any good standing now," put in Ned. "Why don't you sit down and have a rest?"

      "They don't let us," answered the waitress, cautiously.

      "What do they pay?" asked Nellie, sipping her tea and joining in the waitress' look-out for the manager.

      "Fifteen! But they're taking girls on at twelve. Of course there's meals. But you've got to room yourself, and then there's washing, clean aprons and caps and cuffs and collars. You've got to dress, too. There's nothing left. We ought to get a pound."

      "What——"

      "S-s-s!"