It scattered, only to collect again when the soldiers
had passed on. Janet joined them. She heard men cursing the soldiers.
The women stood a little aside; some were stamping to keep warm, and
one, with a bundle in her arms which Janet presently perceived to be
a child, sank down on a stone step and remained there, crouching,
resigned.

"We gotta right to stay here, in the street. We gotta right to live,
I guess." The girl's teeth were chattering, but she spoke with such
vehemence and spirit as to attract Janet's attention. "You worked in the
Chippering, like me--yes?" she asked.

Janet nodded. The faded, lemon-coloured shawl the girl had wrapped about
her head emphasized the dark beauty of her oval face. She smiled, and
her white teeth were fairly dazzling. Impulsively she thrust her arm
through Janet's.

"You American--you comrade, you come to help?" she asked.

"I've never done any picketing."

"I showa you."

The dawn had begun to break, revealing little by little the outlines of
cruel, ugly buildings, the great mill looming darkly at the end of the
street, and Janet found it scarcely believable that only a little while
ago she had hurried thither in the mornings with anticipation and joy
in her heart, eager to see Ditmar, to be near him! The sight of two
policemen hurrying toward them from the direction of the canal aroused
her. With sullen murmurs the group started to disperse, but the woman
with the baby, numb with cold, was slow in rising, and one of the
policemen thrust out his club threateningly.

"Move on, you can't sit here," he said.

With a lithe movement like the spring of a cat the Italian girl
flung herself between them--a remarkable exhibition of spontaneous
inflammability; her eyes glittered like the points of daggers, and, as
though they had been dagger points, the policeman recoiled a little. The
act, which was absolutely natural, superb, electrified Janet, restored
in an instant her own fierceness of spirit. The girl said something
swiftly, in Italian, and helped the woman to rise, paying no more
attention to the policeman. Janet walked on, but she had not covered
half the block before she was overtaken by the girl; her anger had come
and gone in a flash, her vivacity had returned, her vitality again found
expression in an abundant good nature and good will. She asked Janet's
name, volunteering the information that her own was Gemma, that she was
a "fine speeder" in the Chippering Mill,