a housemaid's job easy," Her muffler covered the fact that she had no
shirtwaist. Then she added encouragingly: "You'd better get a job quick.
There's only one blanket on these beds and clothes run down using them for
covers at night."

Opposite us a gray-cheeked mother was wrapping a black petticoat about the
legs of a small child. She tucked the little girl in the narrow bed they
were both to sleep in, and babbled softly to the drowsy child:

"No place yet. My heart do be falling out o' me. Well, I'm not to blame
because it's you that keeps me from getting it. You--" she bent over the
bed and ended sharply: "Oh, my darling, shall we die in Dublin?"

Through the dusk, above the sound of coughing and canvas stretching as the
women settled themselves for the night, there rose the soft voices of two
women telling welcome fairy stories to each other:

"It was a wild night," said one. "She was going along the Liffey, and the
wind coming up from the sea blew the cape about her face and she half fell
into the water. He caught her, they kept company for seven years and then
he married her. Who do you suppose he turned out to be? Why, a wealthy
London baker. Och, God send us all fortune."

There was silence, then the whisper of the mother:

"Look up to the windows, darling. There's just a taste of daylight left."

Gradually it grew dark and quiet in this vault of human misery. Then, far
away from some remote chapel in the house, there floated the triumphant
words of the practising choir: