"You have to be very careful as to how you spend your earnings," I
suggested.

She nodded emphatically.

"After the rent it's not so bad. Of course you can't buy meat. And there
is no milk for the coffee. But always there is one meal a day, and often
two."

She said this last proudly. There was a smack of success in her words.
But as she stitched on in silence, I noticed the sadness in her pleasant
eyes and the droop of her mouth. The look in her eyes became far away.
She rubbed the dimness hastily out of them; it interfered with her
stitching.

"No, it is not the hunger that makes the heart ache," she explained.
"You get used to being hungry. It is for my child that I cry. It was
the machine that killed her. It is true she worked hard, but I cannot
understand. She was strong. And she was young--only forty; and she
worked only thirty years. She began young, it is true; but my man died.
The boiler exploded down at the works. And what were we to do? She was
ten, but she was very strong. But the machine killed her. Yes, it
did. It killed her, and she was the fastest worker in the shop. I have
thought about it often, and I know. That is why I cannot work in the
shop. The machine bothers my head. Always I hear it saying, 'I did it, I
did it.' And it says that all day long. And then I think of my daughter,
and I cannot work."

The moistness was in her old eyes again, and she had to wipe it away