The child on the doorstep anxiously watched the window across the way.
Would the light never go out? Father must be unusually bad to-night, and
she was so tired. The day had been a hard one at the factory and every
bone in her body ached. Well, there was one comfort; to-morrow would be
Sunday and she could stay at home all day. To-morrow? To-day, rather,
for midnight had already passed. She would have one long day to rest and
help mother. She felt now as if she could sleep the whole day through.
She would like to sleep for a week at least, and even then she would not
be rested quite enough. There were moments of unusual fatigue and
depression in which she could almost wish that she might fall asleep and
sleep forever as the other little ones had done. Three of them there
were, delicate, sickly little creatures, who had struggled for a time
against the ills of human existence and then given up the unequal
conflict. At times, she could almost find it in her heart to envy them
were it not for mother and Richard, especially Richard.
There, at last! The light was gone, the window in darkness, and it was
safe for her to return to the tenement across the way.
II.
The same street, the same tenement house, but grown even uglier and
dingier with the passing of the years. In a small room on the second
floor, Jane sits beside the bed on which her mother tosses in the
delirium of fever.
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