ansfers, they had fallen into a rage; and first they had made a
rule that transfers could be had only when the fare was paid; and later,
growing still uglier, they had made another--that the passenger must ask
for the transfer, the conductor was not allowed to offer it. Now Ona
had been told that she was to get a transfer; but it was not her way to
speak up, and so she merely waited, following the conductor about with
her eyes, wondering when he would think of her. When at last the time
came for her to get out, she asked for the transfer, and was refused.
Not knowing what to make of this, she began to argue with the conductor,
in a language of which he did not understand a word. After warning her
several times, he pulled the bell and the car went on--at which Ona
burst into tears. At the next corner she got out, of course; and as she
had no more money, she had to walk the rest of the way to the yards in
the pouring rain. And so all day long she sat shivering, and came home
at night with her teeth chattering and pains in her head and back. For
two weeks afterward she suffered cruelly--and yet every day she had to
drag herself to her work. The forewoman was especially severe with Ona,
because she believed that she was obstinate on account of having been
refused a holiday the day after her wedding. Ona had an idea that her
"forelady" did not like to have her girls marry--perhaps because she was
old and ugly and unmarried herself.

There were many such dangers, in which the odds were all against them.
Their children were not as well as they had been at home; but how could
they know that there was no sewer to their house, and that the drainage
of fifteen years was in a cesspool under it? How could they know that
the pale-blue milk that they bought around the corner was watered, and
doctored with formaldehyde besides? When the children were not well
at home, Teta Elzbieta would gather herbs and cure them; now she was
obliged to go to the drugstore and buy extracts--and how was she to know
that they were all adulterated? How could they find out that their tea
and coffee, their sugar and flour, had been doctored; that their canned
peas had been colored with copper salts, and their fruit jams with
aniline dyes? And even if they had known it, what good would it have
done them, since there was no place within miles of them where any other
sort was to be had? The bitter winter was coming, and they had to save
money to get more cloth