m down. This man was a Jew, but there's
small difference. If the Jew knew best how to cheat in the beginning,
the Christian caught up with him long ago. 'The buttons are all on
wrong,' he said. 'I told you to set them an inch further back. We'll
have to alter them every one and charge you for the time.' 'I can take
oath they are on as I was told to put them on,' I said, 'but if they
must be changed I'll change them myself and save the money.'

"It took long talking to make him agree, but at last he said I could
come next morning but one, and he'd let me alter them as a great favor.
I did come down, but he said they couldn't wait and had made the change,
and he charged me six dollars for what he said was my mistake. It was no
use to complain. He could swear I had done the job wrong, and so I went
home with $5.50 instead of eleven dollars for nearly a fortnight's work.
I changed the place, and so far nobody has docked me; but doing my best,
and Angie working as steady as I do, we can't make more than twenty
cents on a jacket, and it's a short season. When it's over I do coats,
but it's less pay than jackets, and there's living and Maggie's
medicine and the doctor, though he won't take anything. I'd feel better
if he did, but he won't. Angie used to be in a factory, but there's the
baby now, and she doesn't know what way to turn but this. See, he's here
by Maggie." The sick girl lifted a corner of the quilt, and something
stirred,--a baby of seven or eight months whose great eyes looked out
from a face weazened and sharpened, deep experience seeming graven in
every line.

"He's a wise one," the sick girl said. "He's found it's no use to cry,
and he likes to be by me because it's warm. But he frightens me
sometimes, for he just lies and looks at me as if he knew a million
things and could tell them every one. He's always hungry, and maybe that
makes him wiser. I'm sure I could tell some things that people don't
know."

The words came with gasps between. It was plain that what she had to
tell must find speedy listener if it were to be heard at all, but for
that day at least the story must wait. Here, as in other places, the
cloakmaker was earning from sixty to seventy cents a day, but even this
was comfort and profusion compared with the facts that waited in a
Fourth Ward street, and in a rookery not yet reached by any sanitary
laws the city may count as in operation. Here and there still remains
one of the old wooden hou