s miserable world where I had to toil as a child, and could not
go to dances or even read without receiving a torrent of abuse and an
avalanche of blows. What harm had I done by my reading? True, I had not
heard my mother calling, but how often had I spoken to her without
being heard, when she was engrossed in some newspaper or book!

"So I remained quiet, when my mother railed at me for my lie, too
ashamed and bitter to make defense or reply. This silence, as usual,
made my mother still more angry and she shouted: 'You ungrateful wretch,
I'll tell your father, and he'll fix you so you won't feel like lying to
your mother for some time to come.'

"That threat nearly paralysed me with dread, for my father was to me a
strange man whom I had always feared; my mother, when she wanted to
subdue me, only needed to say: 'I'll tell your father.' I remembered the
last time my father had whipped me. I was a big girl at the time, more
than fourteen years old, and working down town. I had to rise very early
in the morning, and it often happened that I would fall asleep again
after my mother had called me. On that particular morning mother had
more difficulty than usual in arousing me, scolding me severely, and I
replied rather impudently, I suppose. She waited till I had got out of
bed and was standing in my bare arms and shoulders over the wash bowl,
and then she told father, who came with a long leather strap, which I
knew well, as it was kept only for one purpose, and beat me so severely
that I carried the marks for a long time. The strap was about two inches
broad, and with this in one hand, whilst he held me firmly with the
other, he belaboured me in such a way that the end of the strap curled
cunningly around my neck and under my arms and about my little breast,
making big welts which swelled at once to about a fourth of an inch in
diameter and were for a few days a most beautiful vivid scarlet in
colour. Then they toned down and new and milder tints came, and finally
there was only a dull sort of green and blue effect. Finally even these
disappeared from my body, but not from me.

"Now, when I thought of the possible consequences of the lie I had told,
I could feel those marks on my shoulders and arms. And, at my mother's
threat, the thought that I might be beaten again made me flush with
shame. A feeling of rebellion, of vivid revolt, came over me. Why not
resist, why not defend myself? I remembered what a factory girl had