treet, it was an
accommodation street, but running through a much poorer and more sordid
quarter. Trina had a little room over the kindergarten schoolroom. It
was not an unpleasant room. It looked out upon a sunny little court
floored with boards and used as the children's playground. Two great
cherry trees grew here, the leaves almost brushing against the window of
Trina's room and filtering the sunlight so that it fell in round golden
spots upon the floor of the room. "Like gold pieces," Trina said to
herself.

Trina's work consisted in taking care of the kindergarten rooms,
scrubbing the floors, washing the windows, dusting and airing, and
carrying out the ashes. Besides this she earned some five dollars a
month by washing down the front steps of some big flats on Washington
Street, and by cleaning out vacant houses after the tenants had left.
She saw no one. Nobody knew her. She went about her work from dawn to
dark, and often entire days passed when she did not hear the sound of
her own voice. She was alone, a solitary, abandoned woman, lost in the
lowest eddies of the great city's tide--the tide that always ebbs.

When Trina had been discharged from the hospital after the operation on
her fingers, she found herself alone in the world, alone with her five
thousand dollars. The interest of this would support her, and yet allow
her to save a little.

But for a time Trina had thought of giving up the fight altogether and
of joining her family in the southern part of the State. But even while
she hesitated about this she received a long letter from her mother, an
answer to one she herself had written just before the amputation of her
right-hand fingers--the last letter she would ever be able to write.
Mrs. Sieppe's letter was one long lamentation; she had her own
misfortunes to bewail as well as those of her daughter. The
carpet-cleaning and upholstery business had failed. Mr. Sieppe and
Owgooste had left for New Zealand with a colonization company, whither
Mrs. Sieppe and the twins were to follow them as soon as the colony
established itself. So far from helping Trina in her ill fortune, it
was she, her mother, who might some day in the near future be obliged to
turn to Trina for aid. So Trina had given up the idea of any help from
her family. For that matter she needed none. She still had her five
thousand, and Uncle Oelbermann paid her the interest with a machine-like
regularity. Now that McTeague had left her, t