had no more money, she had to walk the rest of the way to the yards in
the pouring rain. And so all day long she sat shivering, and came home
at night with her teeth chattering and pains in her head and back. For
two weeks afterward she suffered cruelly--and yet every day she had to
drag herself to her work. The forewoman was especially severe with Ona,
because she believed that she was obstinate on account of having been
refused a holiday the day after her wedding. Ona had an idea that her
"forelady" did not like to have her girls marry--perhaps because she was
old and ugly and unmarried herself.

There were many such dangers, in which the odds were all against them.
Their children were not as well as they had been at home; but how could
they know that there was no sewer to their house, and that the drainage
of fifteen years was in a cesspool under it? How could they know that
the pale-blue milk that they bought around the corner was watered, and
doctored with formaldehyde besides? When the children were not well
at home, Teta Elzbieta would gather herbs and cure them; now she was
obliged to go to the drugstore and buy extracts--and how was she to know
that they were all adulterated? How could they find out that their tea
and coffee, their sugar and flour, had been doctored; that their canned
peas had been colored with copper salts, and their fruit jams with
aniline dyes? And even if they had known it, what good would it have
done them, since there was no place within miles of them where any other
sort was to be had? The bitter winter was coming, and they had to save
money to get more clothing and bedding; but it would not matter in the
least how much they saved, they could not get anything to keep them
warm. All the clothing that was to be had in the stores was made of
cotton and shoddy, which is made by tearing old clothes to pieces and
weaving the fiber again. If they paid higher prices, they might get
frills and fanciness, or be cheated; but genuine quality they could not