Why, how could anybody be worse off than if
they got lung trouble and boils as big as your fist like those
girls over in the tobacco factory?"
"You needn't tell me about work," said Susan. "The streets
are full of wrecks from work--and the hospitals--and the
graveyard over on the Island. You can always go to that
slavery. But I mean a respectable life, with everything better."
"Has one of those swell women from uptown been after you?"
"No. This isn't a pious pipe dream."
"You sound like it. One of them swell silk smarties got at me
when I was in the hospital with the fever. She was a
bird--she was. She handed me a line of grand talk, and I,
being sort of weak with sickness, took it in. Well, when she
got right down to business, what did she want me to do? Be a
dressmaker or a lady's maid. Me work twelve, fourteen, God
knows how many hours--be too tired to have any fun--travel
round with dead ones--be a doormat for a lot of cheap people
that are tryin' to make out they ain't human like the rest of
us. _Me!_ And when I said, `No, thank you,' what do you think?"
"Did she offer to get you a good home in the country?" said Susan.
"That was it. The _country!_ The nerve of her! But I called
her bluff, all right, all right. I says to her, `Are you
going to the country to live?' And she reared at _me_ daring
to question _her_, and said she wasn't.
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