He wished bitterly that
his own pay stopped with the rest; it did not seem fair that he was
not thrown out upon the world too.
"I don't know what they're going to do. They shall have the last cent
I've saved before anybody suffers," he said in his heart. But there
were tears in his eyes when he saw Mrs. Kilpatrick go limping out of
the gate. She waited a moment for her constant companion, poor little
Maggie the doffer, and they went away up the street toward their poor
lodging holding each other fast by the hand. Maggie's father and
grandfather and great-grandfather had all worked in the Farley mills;
they had left no heritage but work behind them for this orphan child;
they had never been able to save so much that a long illness, a
prolonged old age, could not waste their slender hoards away.
IV.
It would have been difficult for an outsider to understand the sudden
plunge from decent comfort to actual poverty in this small mill town.
Strange to say, it was upon the smaller families that the strain fell
the worst in Farley, and upon men and women who had nobody to look to
but themselves. Where a man had a large household of children and
several of these were old enough to be at work, and to put aside their
wages or pay for their board; where such a man was of a thrifty and
saving turn and a ruler of his household like old James Dow in the
cloth-hall, he might feel sure of a comfortable hoard and be fearless
of a rainy day. But with a young man who worked single-handed for his
wife and a little flock, or one who had an invalid to work for, that
heaviest of burdens to the poor, the door seemed to be shut and barred
against prosperity, and life became a test of one's power of
endurance.
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